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The amount of methane in Earth’s atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end approximately a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable, according to a new study led by researchers at MIT. The study, published this week in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters, is based on data from a worldwide NASA-funded measurement network. Methane—which has a global warming potential of 56 over a 20-year time horizon and 21 over a 100-year horizon (compared to CO2’s GWP of 1)—is produced by wetlands, rice paddies, cattle, and the gas and coal industries....

US environmental groups see Barack Obama’s presidential victory as a chance to undo the Bush legacy on global warming, and one idea they are discussing is the possibility of a White House climate czar. Members of the environmental community in and around Washington say such a post could oversee various government agencies, including the Environmental protection agency and the interior department, to focus on tackling global warming and fostering clean energy to jump-start the flagging economy. For the first time, candidates and voters are really connecting the dots between energy, the environment and the economy, said Cathy Duvall, Sierra Club’s...

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week Returns to GW Posted Wednesday, October 15 2008 12:00:22 am By Hannah Ringheim Staff Writer Despite high controversy surrounding last year’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, Young America’s Foundation (YAF) has defended their decision to hold the event again this week. The intent of the week, according to a press release by YAF, is focused on the condemnation of radical Islamic regimes and educating students about “this omnipresent form of radicalism” that YAF said uses religion to justify political violence. Last year, a group of students affiliated with the group Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness caused national controversy by protesting...

Keeping track of your carbon footprint could become as simple as slipping a mobile phone in your pocket: a London-based start-up company has developed software for mobile phones that uses global positioning satellites to work out automatically whether you are walking, driving or flying and then calculate your impact on the environment. Carbon Diem's inventors claim that, by using GPS to measure the speed and pattern of movement, their algorithm can identify the mode of transport being used. It can therefore calculate the amount of carbon dioxide that a journey has emitted into the atmosphere – without any need for...

Sammy Wilson's view on climate change has angered environmentalists The Environment Minister Sammy Wilson has angered green campaigners by describing their view on climate change as a "hysterical psuedo-religion". In an article in the News Letter, Mr Wilson said he believed it occurred naturally and was not man-made. "Resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change, rather than King Canute-style vainly trying to stop it," said the minister. Peter Doran of the Green Party said it was a "deeply irresponsible message." Mr Wilson said he refused to "blindly accept" the need to make significant changes to...

August is the wettest and often the muggiest month of the year. Yet, summer heat continues in short supply, continuing a trend that has dominated much of the 21st Century's opening decade. There have been only 162 days 90 degrees or warmer at Midway Airport over the period from 2000 to 2008. That's by far the fewest 90-degree temperatures in the opening nine years of any decade on record here since 1930. This summer's highest reading to date has been just 91 degrees. That's unusual. Since 1928, only one year—2000—has failed to record a higher warm-season temperature by Aug. 13.

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...

Tastiota, Mexico-A few miles inland from the Sea of Cortez, amid cracked earth and mesquite and sun-bleached cactus, neat rows of emerald plants are sprouting from the desert floor. The crop is salicornia. It is nourished by seawater flowing from_a_man-made_canal. And if you believe the American who is farming it, this incongruous swath of green has the potential to feed the world, fuel our vehicles and slow global warming. He is Carl Hodges, a Tucson-based atmospheric physicist who has spent most of his 71 years figuring out how humans can feed themselves in places where good soil and fresh water...

Barack Obama's speechwriters continue their sales job, today giving BHO a speech to read about public service. And, on his site you can find a "Plan for Universal Voluntary Public Service" (barackobama.com/issues/service), where he informs us that "this will be a cause of my presidency". I can hardly wait! Further: Obama will expand AmeriCorps from 75,000 slots today to 250,000 and he will focus this expansion on addressing the great challenges facing the nation. He will establish a Classroom Corps to help teachers and students, with a priority placed on underserved schools; a Health Corps to improve public health outreach;...

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)...

Japan's second most dubiously famous technological predilection (behind panty-vending machines) is its highfalutin' toilets, which warm, wash, blow dry and deodorize your bum, just to cover the basics. Japan is also well regarded for taking the lead on going green—average energy consumption per person is half ours. Tragically, the Japanese desire for a pampered and squeaky clean butthole is killing that ethos—and the planet. Super-deluxe-awesome-o toilets are always on, constantly sipping power—they now make up four percent of household energy consumption, more than dishwashers or clothes dryers. And they're in 68 percent of homes. One expert says it's the Japanese...

The next US president must improve America's car-dominated cities by levying London-style congestion charges and cracking down on sprawl, British researchers said yesterday. Barack Obama or John McCain must end eight years of "laissez faire" urban policy under the Bush administration and take on America's car-loving public, employing vehicle charging in places such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, says a joint report by the UK's Centre for Cities think-tank and the US Brookings Institution. It urges a new incumbent of the White House to emulate policies that have been credited with improving British cities, including limits on building...

f this week's Senate debate on a proposed cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for climate legislation, things are not looking too good for opening night. The week has been marked by parliamentary maneuvers and bitter accusations over divergent estimates of the bill's future costs. On Wednesday, a group of GOP senators asked that the clerk of the Senate read the entire 491-page bill aloud, an extremely rare request. That took more than 10 hours. Although parliamentary maneuvers could still extend the debate into next week, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) faced...

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...

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2008) — The results of several scientific studies conducted since 1993 have confirmed a 3.2 cm sea level rise. Although this variation might appear negligible, it has in fact turned out to be twice as high as that recorded over the whole of the previous century. This increase in sea level is a consequence of global warming. When sea temperature rises, the sea expands and therefore occupies a greater volume. This phenomenon is now well known to scientists, but other processes that have received less research attention, such as the tidal cycle, seem to contribute at global...

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2008) — NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has announced that projected climate conditions point to a near normal or above normal hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin this year. The prediction was issued at a news conference called to urge residents in vulnerable areas to be fully prepared for the onset of hurricane season, which begins June 1. “Living in a coastal state means having a plan for each and every hurricane season. Review or complete emergency plans now - before a storm threatens,” said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans...

Who: Dr. Arthur Robinson of the OISM What: release of names in OISM "Petition Project" When: 10 AM, Monday May 19 Where: Holeman Lounge at the National Press Club, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC Why: the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM's Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of "settled science" and an overwhelming "consensus" in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled...

Got your passport and itchy feet in search of a vacation destination? Consider this first. It's not a scared-straight story on global warming I promise — it's a traveler's perspective on how the world's climate and it's info served up like a gorgeous guidebook — and, I'll admit, food for thought. ProTraveller put together this list of 20 places that are ripe to change dramatically if the world heats up — and it's a where's where of dream vacations. Here's part of their list, and some info that caught my eye: Great Barrier Reef, Australia Virgin Islands, Caribbean Cook Islands,...

In his climate speech on Monday, Mr. McCain exhibited (as the press usually does) a complete lack of consciousness of the fact that evidence of warming is not evidence of what causes warming. Yet policy must be a matter of costs and benefits, adjusted for the uncertainties involved. Which brings us to today's irony: He who finds a six-figure earmark an affront to humanity is prepared to wave through a trillion-dollar climate bill without, as far as anyone can tell, a single systematic thought about costs and benefits. He who sees "corruption" behind every campaign check goes all compliant when...

“The climate crisis is both urgent and solvable [so] our ultimate aim is halt global warming,” proclaims an Al Gore website and ad campaign. But conservatives, among whom former Speaker Newt Gingrich proudly counts himself, believe hardly a single word of that statement. So it’s hard to fathom why Gingrich is appearing in TV spots with Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi, promoting the campaign. In a damage control letter, Newt claims he is merely trying to engage the climate debate and keep the right relevant, without granting the left’s premise “that we have conclusive proof of global warming [or] that humans...

Here’s an inconvenient truth: Long before man-caused global warming kills people and topples governments, the man-caused scare over global warming is going to have the same effect. Unlike the myth of man-made global warming, the scare is real, and it is here today. The secretary-general of the United Nations told reporters in Austria on Friday that the sudden and steep rise in food prices worldwide has developed into a global crisis. With shortages of affordable food spreading around the world, food-related unrest has broken out in nations as diverse as Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia and Afghanistan. One of the base causes...

[Note: For more on children being indoctrinated into man-made climate fears see: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=DDDC4451-802A-23AD-4000-A9B55ED9489A ] 6th Grade Class Denounces Global Warming Skeptics as 'Horrible People' Excerpt: If you doubt teachers across the country are trying to brainwash schoolchildren with global warming alarmism, take a look inside the sixth grade classroom of teacher Michael Steria at David A. Brown Middle School in Wildomar, California. Twenty-five sixth graders teamed up to write eight letters to The Heartland Institute describing what they had been taught about global warming. [..] Global warming "means that if we don´t fix the climate, everything will be destroyed and...

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...

January 2008 was an exceptional month for our planet. While January 2007 started out well above normal. January 2008 capped a 12 month period of global temperature drops on all of the major well respected indicators. I have reported in the past two weeks that HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year. Here are the 4 major temperature metrics compared top to bottom, with the most recently released at the top: For all four metrics the global average ∆T for January 2007 to January 2008 is: - 0.6405°C

The Earth's orbital behaviors are responsible for more than just presenting us with a leap year every four years. According to Michael E. Wysession, Ph.D., associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, parameters such as planetary gravitational attractions, the Earth's elliptical orbit around the sun and the degree of tilt of our planet's axis with respect to its path around the sun, have implications for climate change and the advent of ice ages. People often think of orbits as circular, but they're not that smooth and simple. They are often...

Aerial photo of the disappearing wetlands of south Louisiana. Credit: Roy Dokka, Louisiana State University A study by NASA and Louisiana State University scientists finds that sediments deposited into the Mississippi River Delta thousands of years ago when North America's glaciers retreated are contributing to the ongoing sinking of Louisiana's coastline. The weight of these sediments is causing a large section of Earth's crust to sag at a rate of 0.1 to 0.8 centimeters (0.04 to 0.3 inches) a year. The sediments pose a particular challenge for New Orleans, causing it to sink irreversibly at a rate of about...

The work of the European Union is often seen as technical, dull and remote: It's hard to gin up much general interest in, say, another green paper on financial regulation, however incisive it may be. But today's announcement in Brussels was a blockbuster: a sweeping package of measures to combat climate change that sets a global standard and means major changes for how Europe gets its energy.

Michael Bevan was on an operating table as surgeons performed a delicate procedure on the artery supplying blood to his brain, when, without warning, the lights went out. For 10 terrifying minutes he lay - conscious, as he had been throughout the operation - as computerised medical equipment re-started, using power from an emergency generator. Dr Farrel Hellig, who stood by helpless as the computers re-booted, said the 69-year-old retired mine manager was fortunate to be alive. For those minutes he was perilously close to becoming a victim of a power crisis which is slowly sending the country into chaos....

The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged, calling for large — if still unquantified — national sacrifices and for a transformation in the way the country produces and uses energy. The Republicans do not go much further than conceding that climate change could be a problem and, with the notable exception of John McCain, offer no comprehensive solutions. In 2000, when Al Gore could have made warming a signature issue in his presidential campaign, his advisers persuaded him that it was too complicated and...

Children are more likely to shield their faces than to smile when Daniel Santillan points his camera. Santillan's photos aren't for any picture album or yearbook _ they help prove that Mexican youngsters are illegally attending public schools in this California border community. With too many students and too few classrooms, Calexico school officials took the unusual step of hiring someone to photograph children and document the offenders. Santillan snaps pictures at the city's downtown border crossing and shares the images with school principals, who use them as evidence to kick out those living in Mexico. Since he started the...

The solar physics community is abuzz this week. No, there haven't been any great eruptions or solar storms. The source of the excitement is a modest knot of magnetism that popped over the sun's eastern limb on Dec. 11th, pictured below in a pair of images from the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). From SOHO, a UV-wavelength image of the sun and a map showing positive (white) and negative (black) magnetic polarities. The new high-latitude active region is magnetically reversed, marking it as a harbinger of a new solar cycle. It may not look like much, but "this...

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2007) — Natural climate variations, which tend to involve localized changes in sea surface temperature, may have a larger effect on hurricane activity than the more uniform patterns of global warming, a report in Nature suggests. In the debate over the effect of global warming on hurricanes, it is generally assumed that warmer oceans provide a more favorable environment for hurricane development and intensification. However, several other factors, such as atmospheric temperature and moisture, also come into play. Drs. Gabriel A. Vecchi of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and Brian J. Soden from the University of...

Proposed fuel efficiency standards in both the US and EU will not reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks over the long term, according to a report released today by the World Resources Institute. Light-duty vehicle fleet fuel consumption in US, Japan and European countries, in liters gasoline equivalent/100km. The report finds that industry has held fuel efficiency almost constant while increasing weight and power. Standards currently proposed in the US and Europe would lead to a 33% increase in fuel efficiency—defined as distance traveled per volume of fuel—in the US and about 25% in Europe once...

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering. The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement. His remarks will be made...

For the first time in history, a fatally flawed global-warming cap-and-trade bill passed out of the United States Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee. Democrats, led by Chairman Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.), approved the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007 (S 2191) by a vote of 11 to eight December 5. Serious Flaws While the outcome of the vote in committee was never in question -- since Democrats hold the majority -- it did provide Republicans the opportunity to expose many of the serious flaws of this bill. The fact is this bill is simply all economic pain for no...

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize on Monday and urged the United States and China to make the boldest moves on climate change or "stand accountable before history for their failure to act." In accepting the prize he shared with the U.N. climate panel, the former vice president said humanity risks sliding down a path of "mutually assured destruction."

Conjuring gemstones from thin air sounds like one of the alchemist's more ambitious projects. But that is what a team of chemists from China is claiming to have achieved by making small diamonds from carbon dioxide. "We are changing a waste gas into gems," claims Qianwang Chen, head of the team producing the diamonds at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province. The team claims its method could be cheaper and more efficient than some existing methods of synthesising diamonds, which require pressures of up five million atmospheres and temperatures that reach 1400 °C. Chen...

An international team of researchers has discovered a methane-consuming microorganism that lives in extremely acidic conditions. The bacterium could one day be used to reduce methane gas emissions from landfills. It could also help to cut methane emissions from geothermal power stations. Aerobic methanotrophic bacteria (methanotrophs) consume methane diffusing away from methane-producing zones of soil and sediment. Some environments with active methane cycles—such as marshes and peat bogs—are very acidic; however, no cultured methanotroph grows optimally below pH 5. By contrast, the new bacterium is extremely acidophilic, and grows optimally at pH 2.0-2.5. Unlike known methanotrophs, which belong to the...

As irrefutable evidence mounts that Nobel Laureate Al Gore's climate alarmism is about nothing other than lining his supposedly green pockets with green currency, manmade global warming skeptics around the world wonder when the former vice president's house of cards will collapse. Without question, if Gore were to lose the support of almost universally adoring Hollywoodans, the scam would implode quicker than a Democrat demanding a recount after losing a close election. As such, the following comments by actor and environmentalist Robert Redford, reported by the New Statesman last week, should bring hope to folks not buying the snake oil...

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/11/who-is-the-gree.html

The picture of a French president who jogs, vacations in New Hampshire and even seems comfortable around President Bush is so unusual that it has earned Nicolas Sarkozy the nickname of Sarko the American. That, along with France’s toughened stand against Iran’s nuclear appetites, won Mr. Sarkozy bipartisan applause in Washington this month. It is certainly a relief to have a French leader who wants to improve relations with the United States. The two countries have plenty of common interests, including fighting terrorism, keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons and nurturing democracy in Lebanon. Washington and Paris still differ on...

'WE have turned out the lights in the studio," NBC's Bob Costas told viewers of Sunday's Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game, "to kick off a week that will include more than 150 hours of programming designed to raise awareness about environmental issues." Discerning viewers with eyes keen enough to pierce the sanctimonious glare of Costas' candlelit silhouette may have noticed that the stadium's klieg lights still shone brightly. On a typical game day, a large football stadium burns about 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 35,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The cars driving to the game spew about 200 metric...

The growth in human population and rising consumption have exceeded the planet's ability to support us, argues John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he says it is time to ring the alarm bells and take radical action in order to avert unspeakable consequences. We humans face two problems of desperate importance. The first is our global ecological plight. The second is our difficulty acknowledging the first. Despite increasing climate change coverage, environmental writers remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we've created. Many fear sounding alarmist, but there is an alarm to sound...

A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors. For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus." I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere...

(1. Introduction 2. The ever-changing climate 3. IPCC pseudoscience challenged 4. CO2 fixation, Kyoto and beyond 5. Sun and climate 6. Modelling fantasies 7. Global alarmism 8. New science and technology 9. Sources

Are the stars aligning for another Al Gore moment in the presidential campaign? The former-vice-president-turned-climate-change-crusader long has hovered over the campaign despite his professed disinterest in becoming a candidate. Now, with rumors of a possible Nobel Peace Prize swirling, he's once again back in the conversation. The peace prize announcement is due on Friday, so he doesn't have long to wait to learn if he has pulled off a unique grand slam for 2007: an Oscar, an Emmy, a bestseller and a Nobel. It would vault him once again back into the center of speculation about whether he might jump...

I am occasionally asked why it is that so many Europeans display reflexive anti-Americanism, and I force myself to choose from a salad of possible answers. One of these is the resentment that I can remember feeling myself when I lived in England in the 1970s: the sheer brute fact that American voters who knew nothing about Europe (and cared less) could pick a president who had more clout than any of our elected prime ministers could exert. America could change our economic climate by means of the Federal Reserve, could use bases in Britain to forward its policies in...