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From Tom NelsonEmail 600, Sept 2007: Watts expose makes NOAA want to change entire USA method Email 600 [Tom Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center] We are getting blogged all over for a cover-up of poor global station and US stations we use. They claim NCDC is in a scandal by not providing observer’s addresses. In any case Anthony Watts has photographed about 350 stations and finds using our criteria that about 15% are acceptable. I am trying to get some our folks to develop a method to switchover to using the CRN sites, at least in the...

Its a tough time for hundreds of coal miners across southwest Virginia. That's because they're getting pink slips from A & G Coal, which is owned by Southern Coal Company. Mark Whooten is a spokesman for Southern Coal. He told News 5 who made the decision. "These layoffs are a decision by our corporate headquarters. They are market driven due to metallurgical coal market fluctuating violently at the present time." The company wouldn't tell us how many jobs they have cut, but we do know its sizeable according to the manager of the local employment office, Gary Hale. "On Monday...

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. At issue is whether the EPA’s use of “administrative compliance orders,” which are essentially government commands issued to property owners, should be subject to judicial review under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. In other words, when the EPA tells a homeowner to stop building because of a possible violation of the Clean Water Act, does that homeowner have the right to promptly challenge the EPA in court? As Robert Barnes observes in The Washington Post, “Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared troubled by...

New light bulb efficiency standards will begin phasing in on Jan. 1 despite intense opposition from conservatives, who have blasted the rules as a textbook unnecessary federal regulation. While Republicans secured inclusion of a measure blocking funding for enforcement of the standards in a year-end spending bill, energy efficiency groups say the provision will have little practical impact. The Energy Department rules will nonetheless go into effect at the start of 2012. "The [spending bill] cut funding for enforcement, however the law is still in effect," said Jack Gillis, spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America. "It is our expectation...

Climate Depot key excerpt: The Antarctic sea ice extent has been at or near record extent in the past few summers, the Arctic has rebounded in recent years since the low point in 2007, polar bears are thriving, sea level is not showing acceleration and is actually dropping, Cholera and Malaria are failing to follow global warming predictions, Mount Kilimanjaro melt fears are being made a mockery by gains in snow cover, global temperatures have been holding steady for a decade or more, deaths due to extreme weather are radically declining, global tropical cyclone activity is near historic lows, the...

Ozone loss over the Arctic this year was so severe that for the first time it could be called an "ozone hole" like the Antarctic one, scientists report. About 20km (13 miles) above the ground, 80% of the ozone was lost, they say. The cause was an unusually long spell of cold weather at altitude. In cold conditions, the chlorine chemicals that destroy ozone are at their most active. It is currently impossible to predict if such losses will occur again, the team writes in the journal Nature.

Federal authorities are pressuring Nashville-based Gibson Guitar to hand over an additional 25 bundles of Indian wood that the company allegedly planned to use in its famous guitars. The complaint was filed today in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and mirrors a 2010 action that sought official forfeiture of wood obtained in a 2009 raid of Gibson facilities. The latter of those cases has been stayed, pending the outcome of the most recent suit. As has been the case in previous allegations, at issue is the classification of certain wood imported to the United States from...

The Solyndra boondoggle illustrates the folly of treating global warming as an economic blessing. When Solyndra went belly up last month, less than a year after it started making solar arrays in Fremont, California, an Energy Department spokesman insisted that the $535 million the federal government had loaned the company was well spent. "The project that we supported succeeded," he said. "The facility was producing the product it said it would produce." That rather short-sighted definition of success exemplifies the loopy logic of President Obama's "green jobs" agenda, which justifies subsidies based on good intentions and employment opportunities rather than...

Returning from ball practice tonight, my 5th grader informed me that today, in science class, he learned that carbon dioxide is causing global warming, melting glaciers, etc., etc. My initial reaction was to say "that's a bunch of baloney" but I contained myself. I'm not surprised that they're teaching it, and I'm ok with him hearing about it (it's everywhere nowadays anyway), provided he learns to take in the information with a critical mindset and challenge it. He'll learn more that way anyway. We discussed the difference between theories and facts, as well as the importance of using the scientific...

Full Title: How to go out with a bang — score points for censorship — a poseur for honor! An editor has resigned after committing the dastardliest of crimes: He helped publish a skeptical paper in a peer-reviewed journal. God-forbid, imagine a paper being reviewed only by people who have some sympathies with your results? It’s unthinkable. We all know that Nature and Science, for example, dutifully send all the papers by alarmists to at least one skeptical reviewer, and since 97% of 77 climate scientists are alarmists, that means the other two scientists who aren’t, are very busy people. ...

Henry Juszkiewicz, the CEO of Gibson Guitars, Inc. was on The Dana Loesch Show on Friday. Gibson is under attack by the the Obama Justice Department for accusations that the company broke American Indian laws. Juszkiewiz said the government suggested that the company's use of unfinished wood from India is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because of the Justice Department's interpretation of a law in India. The Holder Justice Department raided at least two Gibson manufacturing plants this week forcing hundreds of workers off their jobs. Juszkiewiz says the company lost a million dollars this week. Finally, Henry...

Have you noticed a white film on your dishes in recent months? As we first reported earlier this year, the reason is a new environmental law. Most manufacturers have reformulated their dishwasher detergents after laws limiting phosphates went into effect last year. Julie Schimpf of Ft Thomas, Kentucky showed me how bad her dishes looked. Julie said "there's this frosty, filmy look on the top and bottom and it won't go away. I'm finding the same film here on the edges of my plates." Complaints Nationwide Our partners at Consumer Reports Magazine have heard many of the same complaints, from...

Home and business owners who plan to rebuild after the June 1st tornados might be eligible for state money if they decide to 'go green'. The new incentives, offered by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, will be given to anyone who has had damage from the tornados and plans to make energy efficient upgrades to their home as they rebuild. Bobbie Williams and her husband were at their home on King Street when the tornado hit. They have been living in a trailer for two months as they try to rebuild their home and plan to take advantage of...

Our unsustainable population levels are depleting resources and denying a decent future to our descendants. We must stop the denial. A 2009 NPR story on U.S. pregnancies reported that half — yes, half — of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended. That's a lot of unintended consumers adding to our future climate change. And that's what the right calls the "liberal" side of the mass media. The politically conservative U.S. mass media cover unsustainable population levels even less. That pretty much reflects the appalling state of U.S. public education today on population. The U.S. approach to population issues across all levels...

The Obama administration is considering a fleetwide average of 56.2 miles per gallon for all new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. by 2025, two people briefed on the matter said. The proposal would roughly double current fuel-economy targets, and would likely raise the price of some cars by several thousand dollars. The proposal isn't final, and could be adjusted over the next several weeks as regulators prepare a formal draft to send to White House budget officials. The administration has said previously that it is looking at requiring cars average between 47 and 62 mpg by 2025. The...

WASHINGTON — A yearlong experiment with America's electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers — and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast. The group that oversees the U.S. power grid is proposing an experiment that would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections, according to a company presentation obtained by The Associated Press. Officials say they want to try this to make the power supply more reliable, save money and reduce what may be needless efforts. The test is tentatively set to start in...

The narrative of the Obama presidency has been a soap opera, with the lead character careening from one dilemma to another -- never resolving any. Each episode ends on a cliffhanger -- a promise that the next show will grant resolution on whether the economy will grow or descend into a double-dip recession or will the Middle East become a idealized democratic wonderland or the tinderbox of a new world conflict. Yet the lead in this drama is so self-assured that he feels a sense of entitlement to the trappings of the role he now portrays. President Obama has become...

he Obama Administration is getting ready to ditch the Food Pyramid, a symbol of healthy eating for the last two decades. In its place, officials are "dishing up" a simple, plate-shaped symbol, sliced into wedges for basic food groups and half-filled with fruits and vegetables. Beside the plate is a smaller circle for dairy, suggesting a glass of low-fat milk or perhaps a yogurt cup. The revised pyramid is part of the administration's crusade against obesity, led by first lady Michelle Obama.

It appears that The Rapture leading to the end of the world predicted by a Christian radio broadcaster for this past Saturday, May 21, did not take place. And the failure was covered worldwide. A Google search on Saturday evening yielded over 32,000 articles — in English alone — in the world media. The secular, especially the anti-religious, Left enjoys these spectacles of religious foolishness. They seem to confirm not only how absurd these end-of-days predictions are, but how absurd religion is in general. But the Left should not laugh too loudly. The religious world has far fewer doomsday predictions...

Bill Nye "The Science Guy" was on Fox News's "America's News Headquarters" Saturday trying to make the case that despite it being "very difficult to mathematically connect" this year's tornado activity to global warming, "Tornadoes are almost certainly a consequence." When host Uma Pemmaraju asked a seemingly simple question, "Are other countries seeing the same type of activity, the intensity of these tornadoes picking up in those regions as well," "The Science Guy" first seemed completely stumped, and then gave a rather absurd answer (video follows with transcript and commentary): BILL NYE: The tornadoes very difficult to mathematically connect to...

As you pump 13 gallons into your Honda CR-V -- American's best-selling SUV with 28 mpg on the highway and 21 in town -- it's nearly impossible to view the $50 you're spending with a positive attitude. With the national average for regular at $3.81, it's easy to label oil executives as pond scum, but try to remain open-minded. Think of the big picture: Though that promised road trip to Disney World has gone up in carbon monoxide, high gas prices may actually have an upside. Not for you and your family personally, maybe, but perhaps for the United States...

Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing. It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas...

America's largest coal mine fire is the marquee for government ineffectiveness and environmental activism's false pretense. Centralia, PA is home to America's largest coal mine fire -- still burning today since May of 1962. Forty-nine years of government folly, environmentalist demonization, and media sensationalism have managed to fan the flames under Centralia, escalating the costs to end this ecological disaster from under $100,000 in the early sixties to over $600 million today. Bureaucratic half-measures started in the 60's with a planned town dump in an old mine pit.  Regulations required that any openings to the mine be properly sealed with...

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is replacing its new high-tech, electric-eye faucets with the old-fashioned kind after discovering that the new hands-free designs actually allowed more contamination from Legionella and other bacteria than the old style. Although the high-tech faucets cut daily water consumption by well over half, Johns Hopkins researchers identified Legionella growing in 50 percent of cultured water samples from 20 electronic-eye faucets in or near patient rooms on three different inpatient units, but in only 15 percent of water cultures from. . . . ."

Former Al Gore senior aide Leslie Dach dared to dream: In July 2006, Dach was installed as the public relations chief for Wal-Mart. He drafted a number of other progressives into the company, seeking to change the company’s way of doing business: its culture, its politics, and most importantly its products. Out went drab, inexpensive merchandise so dear to low-income Americans. In came upscale organic foods, “green” products, trendy jeans, and political correctness. In other words, Dach sought to expose poor working Americans to the “good life” of the wealthy, environmentally conscious Prius driver. How did that all work out?

"Sustainable Development" (SD) is basically a slogan without a specific meaning.  Linked to Earth Day (April 22), it masquerades as a call for clean air, green energy, and suggests a pristine bucolic existence for us and our progeny -- forever.  But in reality,  it has become immensely useful to many groups who use the slogan to advance their own special agenda, whatever they may be. The term itself was invented by Gro Harlem Bruntlandt, a Norwegian socialist politician and former prime minister.  After her term there, she landed in Paris and, together with Club of Rome veteran Alexander King,...

After watching this video , I wanted to throw something at the monitor. Ed Morrissey reports that CNN anchor T.J. Holmes "confessed" to being an eco criminal in his own life: Hey, look, I'm Catholic - so I know a few things about confessions. The nice thing about Catholic confessions is that we celebrate that sacrament in private. The religious practice of Mother Gaia apparently dictates public shaming as a way to appease the deity for Earth Day, which is at least a little more entertaining than sacrificing a goat, and more economical than sacrificing T.J. Holmes' SUV. This CNN...

Not too long ago, a co-worker asked me a question about doing something in the environmental/recycling arena. I looked at her and said, “I’ll do it because it’s there and when it’s easy, but I’m not going to make a religion out of it.” This particular person fell away from the Church, as we say, due to a situation over which a member of the clergy does owe her an apology. Since then, or maybe before that happened, this person became consumed with veganism, environmentalism and various other isms that manifest as a person changes life-style. In a country founded...

Dr David Evans’ address to the Anti-Carbon-Tax rally, Perth Australia, 23 March 2011.Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen.The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence,  was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools and liars out of our politicians.Let’s set a few things straight. The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global...

Sitting in on a March 1 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) press conference regarding global warming and heavy snowfalls, I couldn’t help feeling like the chairman of the Senate committee questioning mafia capo Frank Pentangeli in Godfather II. The chairman, listening incredulously as Pentangeli contradicts a sworn written statement he had earlier given to the committee, waves the written statement in the air and protests, “We have a sworn affidavit — we have it — your sworn affidavit…. Do you deny that confession, and do you realize what will happen as a result of your denial?” The UN Intergovernmental Panel...

Under the rule of the former speaker Nancy Pelosi, a number of steps were taken to reduce the carbon footprint of Congress. A bit like the Republican party, they are white, seemingly indestructible and bad for the environment. But after an absence of four years, foam plastic coffee cups have made a comeback in the basement coffee shop of the United States Congress building after Republicans began reversing a series of in-house green initiatives undertaken by Democrats. The about-turn was announced by a press aide to John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, who tweeted on Monday morning:...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - General Motors Co's mostly electric Chevy Volt turned in a lackluster performance for efficiency in its first series of road tests by product raters at Consumer Reports. "We would have really liked to have loved it," David Champion, director of Consumer Reports auto test center told Reuters on Monday after announcing the organization's top picks for 2011. "It was fun to drive and the ride quality was pretty good. But when you look at the finances, for us it doesn't make any sense," Champion said. He said consumers seeking value and top fuel efficiency would be better...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2011-46 Washington, D.C., Feb. 18, 2011 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a group of seven individuals who perpetrated a fraudulent pump-and-dump scheme in the stock of a sham company that purported to provide products and services to fight global warming. The SEC alleges that the group included stock promoters, traders, and a lawyer who wrote a fraudulent opinion letter. The scheme resulted in more than $7 million in illicit profits from sales of stock in CO2 Tech Ltd. at artificially inflated prices. Despite touting impressive business relationships and anti-global warming technology innovations, CO2 Tech...

Florida Governor Rick Scott avoided a costly train wreck this week by hitting the brakes on his state's high-speed rail project. Alas, the White House continues to charge full-speed ahead. Mr. Scott rejected $2.4 billion of federal money for an 84-mile line from Tampa to Orlando, saying that it would likely end up costing state taxpayers an additional $3 billion when the state's budget deficit this year is $3.6 billion. Then there's the half a billion dollars in operating subsidies that the train would need every decade, which could be more depending on how much the state has inflated ridership...

Broadcast news emphasizes industry accidents nearly 80 percent of the time; ignore EPA and Obama attacks on U.S. industry. -The coal industry not only gets attacked by the media for being a "dirty" fossil fuel, it rarely gets positive coverage because the networks focus on disasters. Since Jan. 1, 2010, nearly 80 percent of the broadcast network stories about coal were related to tragic mining accidents. Only 14 percent of stories mentioned coal in any context other than a mine disaster or natural disaster that affected mining. -On Jan. 13, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency took the unprecedented step of...

CO2Science and 68 signatories To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate: February 8, 2011 In reply to “The Importance of Science in Addressing Climate Change” On 28 January 2011, eighteen scientists sent a letter to members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate urging them to “take a fresh look at climate change.” Their intent, apparently, was to disparage the views of scientists who disagree with their contention that continued business-as-usual increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the burning of coal, gas, and oil will lead to a host...

As was discussed on the February 2nd edition of Pratt on Texas, the ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) rolling blackouts across the state could have been prevented with better planning and policy. Electrical engineer, Ross Aten, joined Robert Pratt to talk about how too many coal and natural gas power plants within ERCOT were taken offline for maintenance. Ross also explained that if you, ‘ran the numbers’, the only way ERCOT could have met peak winter demand usage is if wind energy across the state was producing at significant totals. However, because of the ice storm and lack of...

Conservatives have long told anecdotes about the outrageous behavior of some liberal university professors, but now there is video to prove it. After getting a tip from a Louisiana State University student, a web-based organization called Campus Reform sent a cameraman into Professor Bradley E. Schaefer's freshman Astronomy 1101 class. The course description says the class is about "fundamental principles of the solar system," but on this particular day the topic was U.S. policy on global warming. Students were asked to sit in sections according to what they think the U.S. should do about global warming, with choices including do...

"Two hundred years ago, this was prairie covered with six-foot-high switchgrass. Winnebago Indians lived here, and then white settlers … Now 50 wind turbines that were erected over the winter and the (VeraSun) ethanol plant, have brought new energy to a town that long lived off the ground God created with glaciers, and laid down here."

Wind turbines wring energy out of a free-flowing fuel ­supply that may be losing some of its punch. Surface winds appear to be weakening across the Northern Hemisphere, including in the United States, Western Europe, and China—the world's top three markets for wind power. And climate change threatens to weaken them further during this century as faster warming over northern ­latitudes trims the temperature gradients that energize airflows.

After almost two decades of effort to reduce vehicle emissions, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority will retire its last diesel bus Wednesday and become the only major transit agency in the nation with a fleet that is totally equipped with alternative-fuel technologies. In an urban area where diesel buses began operating in 1940, the MTA now has 2,221 buses powered by compressed natural gas, as well as one electric bus and six gasoline-electric hybrids. Transit officials estimate that the elimination of diesel engines has reduced the release of cancer-causing particulates from the bus fleet by 80% and greenhouse...

BOSTON – A solar panel manufacturer that received $58 million in state aid in 2007 to open a factory at a former Massachusetts military base is closing the plant and laying off 800 workers.Evergreen Solar Inc. announced Tuesday it is shutting down the Devens plant by the end of the 2011 first quarter.Gov. Deval Patrick had heralded Evergreen as key to the state's economic future in clean energy. Economic Development Secretary Greg Bialecki said the administration is disappointed and will work to recover any money Evergreen owes the state.

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash. – The lack sales for Byron Holcomb's new business hasn't clouded his vision. "This is the future right here," he said, leaning against a four-wheel drive battery-powered buggy. "The electric car is coming and it's going to be the dominant means of transportation in the U.S." Holcomb, a retired attorney, opened Go Green, Bainbridge Island's one-and-only car dealership, in October. And in true Bainbridge style, all the cars are electric, and the showroom is a slick little Winslow storefront that could have just as easily been an art gallery. Actually, it's that too. Abstract originals adorn the...

John B. Miller, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, doing research for NOAA, has been filmed at a “350″ climate change rally at the Denver statehouse calling for control of population and an end to the “madness” of economic growth.In what was clearly a passionate and deeply heartfelt speech, Miller told the audience, to cheers and applause: I would be remiss, as a scientist who studied this, if I didn’t mention the following two things:The first is that, most importantly, we need to do, as a society, in this country and globally, whatever we can to reduce...

The UN’s IPCC Assessor David Shearman wants you to pay an eco tax of $18,000 for every child you have. This is to compensate the planet for you being a human. Don’t forget the eco elitists in power think you are a disease, a scourge on the planet, a virus that needs to be eliminated so the logical consequence is they want you to pay even more for being a human - that is to them of course. They have taken it upon themselves to represent the earth - no one voted them there - they elevated themselves to that...

Ethanol damages engines and is not a viable alternative to fossil fuels, but farmers and lobbyists don't want you to know that

In 1928, as America lurched towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin revealed his master plan - nature was to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour. Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden. Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance and evolution became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life...

Over the last decade, many evangelical Christians have embraced the doctrine called creation care, which uses a scriptural basis to promote good stewardship of the earth and its resources. For these believers, problems like climate change threaten to greatly intensify third-world poverty, making actions to reduce global warming emissions an urgent Christian issue. “We are convinced that evangelicals must engage this issue without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or humanity’s responsibility to address it,” hundreds of evangelical leaders declared in a 2006 statement on climate change. But while a growing number of local and national...

Editors' note: This piece is co-authored by Rev. Samuel Rodriguez and Amy FrederickThe Obama Administration still hasn't gotten the message voters sent Washington on November 2. The lame duck session and 111th Congress finally ended, without the White House getting key items on its wish list. So now, the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department intend to impose costly, job-killing, economy-strangling new rules for power plants and refineries, and implement more land-grabs that will lock up additional millions of acres and more billions of dollars of American energy. Their goal is to end the hydrocarbon and nuclear era in America...

Conservative policy experts and religious leaders have collaborated to condemn the radical environmentalism movement in a 12-part video series. The series, called “Resisting the Green Dragon,” features criticisms of the green movement which religious leaders contend is a false religion that puts nature above people. "Environmentalists have a long history of believing and promoting exaggerations and myths," says Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission in the video. One such myth speakers cite in the video is the notion that humans are causing global warming. According to The Cornwall Alliance founder Dr. E. Calvin Beisner,...