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Polar bears drowning in an Alaskan sea because the ice packs are melting—it’s the iconic image of the global warming debate. But the validity of the science behind the image—presented as an ignoble testament to our environment in peril by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth—is now part of a federal investigation that has the environmental community on edge. Special agents from the Interior Department’s inspector general's office are questioning the two government scientists about the paper they wrote on drowned polar bears, suggesting mistakes were made in the math and as to how the bears actually died,...

Two stories have dropped that may blow big holes in the anthropogenic global warming argument — one of which is literally sky-high.  Forbes reports on a peer-reviewed study that uses NASA data to show that the effects of carbon-based warming have been significantly exaggerated.  In fact, much of the heat goes out into space rather than stay trapped in the atmosphere, an outcome that started long before AGW alarmists predicted: NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new...

Despite significant pyrotechnics and air travel disruption last year, the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull simply didn't put that many aerosols into the stratosphere. In contrast, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, put 10 cubic kilometers of ash, gas and other materials into the sky, and cooled the planet for a year. Now, research suggests that for the past decade, such stratospheric aerosols—injected into the atmosphere by either recent volcanic eruptions or human activities such as coal burning—are slowing down global warming. "Aerosols acted to keep warming from being as big as it would have been," says atmospheric scientist John Daniel...

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 Science and Environmental Policy Project is one of the leading sources of realist research and analysis on climate change. It produces a weekly compilation of news and research on global warming which you can sign up to receive via email. SEPP was founded by Fred Singer, one of the leading realist scientists. For a great short summary of the current status of the climate debate, which rages hotter than ever before, see this presentation which Dr. Singer will deliver in Sicily next month. It covers in incisive fashion the most significant aspects of the debate. For a full picture,...

Perhaps you have very publicly expressed your belief in dangerous man-made warming, just as many media organisations and politicians have done? Who could blame you, for the United Nations, through its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC) is adamant that manmade emissions of CO2 are to blame for higher temperatures during the late 20th century. The media duly reports this to the world, assuming that surely the IPCC knows what it is talking about. On it goes, with a new prediction of disaster every week and hardly a word to be seen or heard from anyone who disagrees with the...

------ snip World temperatures did not rise from 1998 to 2008, while manmade emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel grew by nearly a third, various data show. The researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and Finland's University of Turku said pollution, and specifically sulphur emissions, from coal-fueled growth in Asia was responsible for the cooling effect.

At a California Senate oversight hearing yesterday called by Senator Pavley, a joint author of the state's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), Air Resources Board Chairman Nichols reaffirmed her agency's commitment to proceed with implementation of a robust package of clean energy policies backed up with a cap-and-trade program to cut the state's emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. Chairman Nichols also announced a major new addition to the AB 32 package - CARB will require that major industrial facilities in California, such as refineries and cement plants, implement cost-effective reduction measures that will provide significant greenhouse...

As time passes the global warming fiasco becomes more and more understandable, and more incredulous, more unbelievable. Hard-nosed physical evidence of man-made global warming has yet to be provided by the promoters of warming, even after a nominal $80 billion dollars have been spent in the attempt to do so. Since some of the ideas for mitigating man-made global warming (yet to be demonstrated) involve trillion dollar measures, it is crucially important that we get the science right. If we don’t get the science right, we’ll never get the policy right.

A frothing Chris Matthews on Wednesday excoriated Rush Limbaugh as "evil" for spreading "lies" about global warming. The Hardball host highlighted a new Rolling Stone article by Al Gore that chides Barack Obama for not doing enough on climate change. Matthews, however, chose to attack Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh: "These people are evil in what they're doing. I'm not saying their souls are evil, but what they're doing is really, really wrong and it's not the President." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] The MSNBC host declared no room for debate on global warming, announcing, "But here is a...

From the safety of the political sidelines, former Vice President Al Gore is venturing into a touchy topic, presenting his holistic view of how to curb the buildup of greenhouse gases warming the planet. Besides improving technology to reduce fossil fuel emissions, he is advocating "educating and empowering girls and women." "That's the most powerful leveraging factor," Gore said in a speech Monday in New York. "When that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices." Although not entirely spelled out in the speech, Gore's thinking goes this way: If women are confident their...

Gun ownership, carrying a gun linked to heavy alcohol use Large, multi-state study shows certain gun owners more likely to drink excessively June 14, 2011 (SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Gun owners who carry concealed weapons or have confronted another person with a gun are more than twice as likely to drink heavily as people who do not own guns, according to a study by UC Davis researchers. Binge drinking, chronic heavy alcohol use, and drinking and driving were all more common among gun owners generally than among non-owners, even after adjusting for factors such as age, sex, race, and state of...

Texas and 14 other states clearly want to deep-six the endangerment finding. "Overturning the endangerment finding would mean finding that EPA did not have a solid basis" for its decision, said Gerrard, director of the university's Center for Climate Change Law, in an interview. "EPA has heaped up enormous volumes of evidence on one side. The evidence on the other side is exceedingly thin. "EPA is the agency that has the scientists with the expertise," he continued. Before issuing the endangerment finding they "looked at it, relooked at it and re-relooked at it. They seriously examined critiques and still ended...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) papers, leaked ahead of a key meeting in Peru next week, outline the series of techniques in which scientists hope will manipulate the world’s climate to reduce carbon emissions. Among the ideas proposed by a group of 60 leading scientists from around the world, including Britain, include producing “lighter coloured” crops to reflect sunlight, blasting aerosol “mirrors” into the stratosphere and suppressing cirus clouds.

BOSTON (Reuters) – A mountain lion was killed just 70 miles from New York City early on Saturday morning, and officials were trying to determine if it was the same big cat spotted a week ago roaming the posh suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut. The 140-pound mountain lion was hit by a small SUV on a highway in Milford, Connecticut, early Saturday morning, and died from its injuries. The driver was unhurt, officials said. With no native mountain lion population in the state, "it's possible and even likely" it is the same enormous cat with a long tail spotted last weekend...

Global greenhouse gas emissions have risen even faster during the past decade than predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other international agencies. According to alarmist groups, this proves global warming is much worse than previously feared. The increase in emissions “should shock even the most jaded negotiators” at international climate talks currently taking place in Bonn, Germany, the UK Guardian reports. But there’s only one problem with this storyline; global temperatures have not increased at all during the past decade. The evidence is powerful, straightforward, and damning. NASA satellite instruments precisely measuring global temperatures...

From the Tropics north, warmer summers - and their almost certainly disastrous consequences - within the next few decades are close to being an irreversible consequence of global warming says a new study from Stanford University in the United States of America. The research is published in the new edition of the journal Climate Change and says warmer summers are on the way unless greenhouse gas concentrations stop increasing. The change will be felt first closest to the Equator, where, say the scientists there will be a "permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat" within 20 years. The warming trend will...

Mauna Kea, the highest island mountain in the world, is cloaked with snow--a sight you don't normally see during the early summer months. Video at the link

Video explaining that it is 'winter type' weather responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of lightning storms. It has been unusually cool for months. This is the current radar/satellite image. Kailua is drowning!

I was disappointed upon seeing a Global Warming “science” pitch recently published in Politico. Cold shoulder for climate change was written by sports writer turned outdoors, travel and entertainment reporter turned environmental journalist Darren Samuelsohn. I won't pick apart details of the entire article. It's based on the old propaganda template: warmers are scientists, skeptics are right-wing ideologues. No mention of the much larger number of professional scientists and engineers who have gone from skeptical to calling the whole thing a fraud. In Samuelsohn's world, warmers and their climate theories have been “exonerated” and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on...