Free Republic

Former vice president Al Gore is as eager as your average liberal on the street in wanting to explore resistance to the persuasiveness of global warming theories. The first problem? If conservatives are so thick in the head, why does the rest of the public need pictures, not just mere words? In a supportive interview with Bryan Walsh in Time magazine, Gore explained "Years ago I shifted from making speeches about climate to presenting slideshows precisely because the complexity of the material makes it easier to communicate with pictures. Interactive infographics make it easier still." Then came time for "Science,"...

Some important questions and no-nonsense answers: Q: So who is this Lord Tebbit? A: To fill some Americans in: we’ve all heard of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady. Well, Lord Norman Tebbit of Chingford was one of her “outspoken” senior cabinet ministers. Today he’s a conservative columnist with little time for “global warming” nightmares. And, to be frank, Tebbit comes from tough stock. Some history: He and his wife survived the infamous 1984 Conservative Party conference bombing in Brighton, England. Years before, Tebbit had escaped out of a burning Mosquito aircraft. (Seriously.) Q: Why isn’t Tebbit afraid of...

The American Geophysical Union plans to announce Monday that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue. The effort is a pushback against congressional conservatives who have vowed to kill regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. "This group feels strongly that science and politics can't be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists," said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.

And when G-d your G-d will bring you to the Land to which you come to inherit it, and you shall give the blessing on Mt. Grizim and the curse on Mt. Eval. (From this week's Torah portion, Re'eh, Deuteronomy 11:29) Professor Adam Zartal finished his archeology studies before the Yom Kippur War and soon began his research of the Biblical inheritance of Menashe. In the days after the Six Day War it was still possible to roam freely in the area, and the kibbutznik from Ein Shemer enlisted volunteers to comb the area - meter by meter - in...

Dr. Sally Severino was a prominent New York based Freudian psychoanalyst, the first female President of the American College of Psychoanalysts who had received a lot of media attention for her groundbreaking research on PMS. Yet, It is practically unheard-of for a Freudian to embrace faith, since Freud himself was a notorious atheist… all my power and prosperity felt empty. It took God to fill that emptiness… I had all the perks of the American Dream--big house, expensive car, designer clothes. It didn't help. But when my life broke apart, I broke open. I realized something was missing--and the something...

Is the science really settled? To the chagrin of global warmers everywhere, two-thirds of Australians now doubt and/or reject Al Gore's end-of-the-world warming theory. So, how will Australia look like to Obama on his trip Down Under next month? A recent "global warming" poll conducted by Galaxy Research for the Institute of Public Affairs surveyed 1000 respondents across Australia from 30 April- 2 May 2010, offers some clues: *35% of Australians believe that "The world is warming and man's emissions are to blame." * 26% of Australians believe that "The variation in global temperature is just part of the natural...

I must conclude with the humbling and sorrowful remark, that we who profess faith, and are never troubled with unbelief, are not altogether free from blame. Too often our faith is little better than a mere "useless assent" to certain theological propositions, but not a living, burning, active principle—which works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world. It is not the faith which made primitive Christians rejoice under Roman persecution, and made Luther stand up boldly before the Diet of Worms, and made Ridley and Latimer "love not their lives to the death," and made Wesley give up...

It is an age of free thought and liberty of action—an age of scientific inquiry, and determination to question and cross-examine ancient opinions—an age of greedy pursuit of pleasure and impatience of restraint—an age of idolatry of intellect, and extravagant admiration of so-called cleverness—an age of Athenian craving for novelty and constant love of change—an age when we see on all sides a bold but ever shifting skepticism, which at one time tells us that man is little better than an ape, and at another that he is little less than a god—an age when there is a morbid readiness...

No Church is Exempt... so take heed!!! ------ The New Jerusalem Post Writers Latest news reports are that five terrorist cell groups have been operating in many of our churches. They have been identified as: Bin Sleepin, Bin Arguin, Bin Fightin, Bin Complainin, and Bin Missin. Their leader, Lucifer Bin Workin, trained these groups to destroy the Body of Christ. The plan is to come into the church disguised as Christians and to work within the church to discourage, disrupt, and destroy. However, there have been reports of a sixth group. A tiny cell known by the name Bin Prayin...

The climate-change campaign is in catastrophic free fall. Nearly every day brings a new embarrassment or retraction for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the supposed gold standard for "consensus" science. The withdrawal this week of BP, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar from the main US business lobby for greenhouse-gas controls is the latest political blow to the campaign. The anti-warming lobby long demonized skeptics as the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers while warning of climate "tipping points." Now, the "Climategate" scandal that broke in November is looking like a true tipping point: The leaked e-mails have done to the climate-change...

Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end. But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail. Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions...

SAN FRANCISCO — When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.

For the past 150 years archaeologists have been verifying the exact truthfulness of the Bible's detailed records of various events, customs, persons, cities, nations, and geographical locations. Dr. Nelson Glueck probably the greatest modern authority on Israeli archeology, has said, “No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” In every instance where the Bible can be, or has been checked out...

Introduction The famous evolutionist Julian Huxley once said, "Any view of God as a personal being is becoming frankly untenable. The difficulty of understanding the functions of a personal ruler in a universe which the march of knowledge is showing us ever more clearly as self-ordered and self-ordering in every minutest detail is becoming more and more apparent" (Essays of a Biologist [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923], p. 217). His sentiments were echoed by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell: "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin,...

The science showing that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are causing a dangerous warming of the world's climate is sound, President Barack Obama's top scientists said on Wednesday, despite controversial e-mails stolen from climate researchers. E-mails from Britain's University of East Anglia, made public last month after being obtained by hackers, show climate researchers deriding global warming skeptics, who argue that the messages show that the researchers manipulated data to make climate change appear more definitive.

Perhaps it is comforting to believe that science is an absolute discipline: immune from fads, fanatics and frauds, untroubled by extremists, evangelists, glory-seekers and bigots. But it is not. It is as vulnerable to the vested interests and biases of its practitioners as any corporate entity or political party. Uncomfortable truths are suppressed and dubious evidence given undue prominence. Nowhere is this more worryingly obvious than in the science of climate change. As a field of research it has become so heavily politicised that opposing views are spoken of in terms of religion: believers and non-believers, with the accent being...

Warming Scandal: The architect of climate fraud steps down, the creator of the infamous "hockey stick" is investigated, and Australia's parliament defeats cap-and-trade. We love the smell of truth in the morning. As the high priests of what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a "religion" prepare their pilgrimage to worship the earth goddess Gaia in Copenhagen, complete with humanity being sacrificed, the heresy of climate truth is finally being heard. The gospel of climate change, once expressed with the messianic fervor of an Elmer Gantry by Al Gore, is now expressed with the stammering incoherence of an Elmer Fudd...

My attention has been drawn to a comment by Steve McIntyre on the Climate Audit website relating to the pattern of radial tree growth displayed in the ring-width chronology "Yamal" that I first published in Briffa (2000). The substantive implication of McIntyre's comment (made explicitly in subsequent postings by others) is that the recent data that make up this chronology (i.e. the ring-width measurements from living trees) were purposely selected by me from among a larger available data set, specifically because they exhibited recent growth increases. This is not the case. The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn...

Atheist and religious skeptic student groups are on the rise across the country's high school and college campuses. The Secular Student Alliance added its 160th affiliate campus group last week and reports that demand for their group starting packets are high. "It’s been a challenge to keep up with the demand for services, especially group-starting packets and follow-up," said Lyz Liddell, senior campus organizer, in a statement earlier this month. "That’s a nice problem to have." The number of SSA campus affiliate groups has increased from 100 in 2008 to 160 this year. In 2007, the alliance counted only 80....

As I'm sure you know, meteorology is an inexact science due to the large number of variables involved in predicting and understanding the weather. I frequently say that weather forecasting is a humbling endeavor, and I have learned to respect its challenges. From this perspective, you might be able to better understand why I wince when hearing pronouncements such as "the science is settled", "the debate is over", or even the "the temperature in the 2050s is projected to be..." I realize that forecasting climate and weather are different, but both involve a large number of moving parts. There are...

Jaycee Dugard, the woman who was abducted at the age of 11 in 1991, was recently discovered living in a virtual prison in the back yard of a couple's come in Antioch, Calif., as has been widely reported. She had been there for 18 years, confined and horrifically abused, even giving birth to her rapist's children. They were kept prisoner and isolated, never having attended school or seen a doctor. Amazingly, a Reno psychic is now claiming the case proves the accuracy of her abilities. Dayle Schear, who was paid by Jaycee's parents to help locate their daughter, says she...

After our article on atheism was published (creation.com/atheism), a former atheist wrote to tell of how he came to faith in Christ. Following that is a poignant email received in the same time period about a young man who sadly did take his own life. Dear CMI, I cannot express my gratitude in words. I became a Christian three years ago after struggling with thoughts of suicide due to my atheistic beliefs. Your ministry truly saved my life. I was raised in a secular home, and surrounded by atheistic propaganda from an early age, whether it be from school or...

Willie Soon, a Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist with scores of peer-reviewed papers and books to his credit, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers asserting the Earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming. Soon told the second International Conference on Climate Change on March in New York City, “We have a system [of peer reviewing scientific literature] that is truly, truly appalling.” Soon’s criticisms echoed an earlier presentation at the 2-1/2-day conference that was attended by about 700 scientists, economists, and policymakers considering the issue of “Global Warming: Was it ever really...

By John Fleck Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal Journal Staff Writer Since he was a kid, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt — geologist, moon-walking astronaut, former U.S. senator — has been fascinated by weather and climate. When he was a child in Silver City, he and his father studied rainfall data from southern New Mexico. When he launched to the moon in 1972, he took the latest Earth weather charts with him and spent downtime during the journey looking back and trying his hand at weather forecasts.

A keynote speaker at the upcoming International Conference on Climate Change says carbon dioxide would have to be a miracle compound in order to have any significant global climate impact. John Coleman has more than 50 years' experience forecasting the weather. He is also one of the 70+ featured scientists who will be attending the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York City March 8-10. As the Obama administration mulls carbon cap-and-trade, Coleman had this to say about CO2. "CO2? It's a great positive," he states. "Without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we'd all die because everything we...

Welcome More than 70 of the world’s elite scientists specializing in climate issues will confront the subject of global warming at the second annual International Conference on Climate Change in New York City March 8-10, 2009.They will be joined by economists, legal experts, and other climate specialists calling attention to new research that contradicts claims that Earth’s moderate warming during the 20th Century primarily was man-made and has reached crisis proportions.The conference expects to draw 1,000 attendees including private-sector business people, state and federal legislators and officials, policy analysts, media, and students.Headliners among the 70-plus presenters will be: William...

Daivd Ignatius takes President Bush to task for undue optimism and praises his successor for refreshing pessimism. But he plays so fast and loose with the facts that the force of his underlying message (that a healthy dose of humility and skepticism about government is a good thing) is lost.

On Friday, the California Air Resources Board will decide whether to adopt its “scoping plan” for the implementation of AB 32, the 2006 anti-global warming law. It requires state energy suppliers to use far more power from cleaner but more costly sources. Given that this would impose unique burdens on California businesses, many observers (including this editorial page) have been skeptical and said a national or international approach to global warming makes more sense. The response from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been that the opposite is true: Far from burdening the economy, the forced transition to new sources of power...

Chemist Dr. Martin Hertzberg’s response to NYT’s Paul Krugman: 'Hysteria is based on half-baked computer models’ By EPW Blog Tuesday, August 5, 2008 Dr. Martin Hertzberg’s response to NYT’s Paul Krugman: ‘Hysteria is based on half-baked computer models’ (Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry, is one of the more than 500 scientists featured in the U.S. Senate’s report of scientists dissenting from man-made global warming fears. See this U.S. Senate report.) Hertzberg Excerpt: I am a lifelong liberal Democrat, but I am also a scientist. […] In this morning’s article “Can This Planet...

The alignment of the planets, and especially that of Jupiter and Saturn, control the climate on Earth.So explained Rhodes Fairbridge of Columbia University, a giant in science over much of the last century whose accomplishments are perhaps unsurpassed for their breadth, depth, and volume. This one man authored or co-authored 100 scientific books and more than 1,000 scientific papers, he edited the Benchmarks in Geology series (more than 90 volumes in print) and was general editor of the Encyclopaedias of the Earth Sciences. He edited eight major encyclopedias of specialized scientific papers in the atmospheric sciences and astrogeology; geomorphology;...

Thirty days after Steve McIntyre caught NASA cooking climate history again - this time in a feeble attempt to somehow conceal the alarmist-embarrassing  downward trend since 1998 -- Al Gore shamelessly portrayed Saturday's Myanmar cyclone catastrophe as a ‘consequence' of global warming.  A mere 16 days after NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation's cool phase shift would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, Gore told NPR that the "trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global...

'Big Thaw,' a summertime spectacular in National Geographic magazine, provided awesome scenes of climate-change catastrophes.The glaciers are melting. The ice sheets are melting. They're sliding rapidly out to sea. More rapidly than anyone imagined. Look for the ice sheets to collapse. Look for sea levels to rise. Etc. Etc.National Geographic's breathless account, brilliantly illustrated with the stunning photography for which it is famous, won headlines around the world. It has been dramatized and magnified on nightly newscasts and blogs alike, and has become a staple in the popular imagination.But it won't happen, says Prof. Cliff Ollier of the University...

Vincent Gray has begun a second career as a climate-change activist. His motivation springs from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body that combats global warming by advocating the reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Dr. Gray has worked relentlessly for the IPCC as an expert reviewer since the early 1990s.But Dr. Gray isn't an activist in the cause of enforcing the Kyoto Protocol and realizing the other goals of the worldwide IPCC process. To the contrary, Dr. Gray's mission, in his new role as cofounder of The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, is to...

Antarctica -- a vast territory whose sea-ice growth in winter effectively doubles its size to envelop an area three times that of Canada -- is the world's coldest continent by far, its permanent ice sheet regulating the Antarctic atmosphere. It is also the world's windiest and driest continent by far, and its highest by far, with a mean elevation of 2,300 metres.It is also the world's most remote continent, its least explored and least understood.Not until 1998, with the advent of new technologies and improved scientific understanding, did human knowledge "allow the question of the global relevance of Antarctica...

To save the planet from global warming -- a looming catastrophe many believe we can no longer prevent -- could require that China stop building the equivalent of a new 1000 megawatt coal plant every five days, and India the same equivalent every two weeks. It could also require that the rest of the developing world slows its economic growth, for the good of humanity. And it could require us, in the rich countries, to dramatically curtail our air and auto travel, and other greenhouse gas producing activities, even if it means plunging ourselves into recession if not depression.Or,...

Ideologies: Once in a while the truth accidentally tumbles out on global warming activists' real agenda. That's exactly what happened at the U.N., when Bolivia's leader called for ending capitalism to save the planet. Delivering the keynote address at the United Nations forum on Indigenous People on Monday, Bolivia's President Evo Morales told the adoring crowd that "if we want to save our planet earth, to save life, to save mankind, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system."Morales elaborated on that by calling for an end to "unbridled industrial development, extraction of natural resources, excessive...

The last few years have witnessed an Internet-stock bubble and a real-estate bubble. Could we be approaching the bursting point of the climate-change bubble? The intensity of the current climate crusade, Al Gore’s $300 million ad campaign, and Time’s fifth panicky global-warming cover in three years (“Be Worried, Be Very Worried” read the 2006 cover) are all good contrary indicators suggesting that the hysteria is reaching its terminal stage. Like mortgage-backed securities dealers, the climate campaigners are in a panic because the public isn’t buying what they’re selling. The latest annual Gallup survey on the environment shows that only 37...

Want to talk about really inconvenient truths? Well, despite Nobel Laureate Al Gore's massive campaign to scare the world into thinking the planet is facing imminent doom at the hands of global warming, Americans don't seem to be buying it.In fact, a new Gallup poll released moments ago revealed, "a little more than a third say they worry about [global warming] a great deal, a percentage that is roughly the same as the one Gallup measured 19 years ago."Hehehehehe.Here are the exquisitely delicious details (emphasis added): Despite the enormous attention paid to global warming over the past several years, the...

Stephen Schwartz knows as much about the effects of aerosols on climate change as anyone in the world, and he's worried. He believes climate change is so massive an economic issue that we face costs "in the trillions if not quadrillions of dollars." He thinks a Herculean effort and great sacrifice is required to get the world down to zero net increase in carbon dioxide concentrations, an effort he compares to that which the Allies undertook in their all-out war against Nazi Germany and Japan."Recall World War II, where everyone was making a sacrifice: gas rationing, tire rationing, no...

Iceland is shrouded in a permanent low-pressure system. Far to the south, the Azores are shrouded in permanent highs. Both pressure systems rock, from east to west and with ever-changing intensity, in the process controlling the North Atlantic's westerly winds. When the westerlies are strong, Europe's summers are cool, its winters are mild and rain is frequent. When westerlies are weak, rainfall decreases and temperatures become extreme, leading to summer heat waves and winter deep freezes.These year-to-year variations in the North Atlantic are known as the North Atlantic Oscillation. Though in many ways mysterious, their effects are quite predictable...

He's called the world's most famous hurricane expert, not because he likes to fly into hurricanes to experience them up close -- which he does -- but because of what he's learned from them, up there, buffeted by the fury of nature. William Gray has developed an intuitive sense when it comes to understanding the atmosphere in its infinite complexity. This intuition rooted in experience allowed him to pioneer the science of hurricane forecasting more than two decades ago, and subsequently to practice his craft with an unprecedented precision that he keeps refining year after year. He and his...

Bob Carter, a professor at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia), is a paleontologist, a stratigrapher, and a marine geologist.He has been chair of the National Marine Science and Technologies Committee, director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program, and chair of the Earth Sciences Discipline Panel of the Australian Research Council.He is Cambridge educated.And he is an outspoken global-warming skeptic.Most global-warming skeptics criticize the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on limited grounds -- they might view the science put forth by the IPCC to be at odds with science...

We are doomed, say climate change scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that is organizing most of the climate change research occurring in the world today. Carbon dioxide from man-made sources rises to the atmosphere and then stays there for 50, 100, or even 200 years. This unprecedented buildup of CO2 then traps heat that would otherwise escape our atmosphere, threatening us all."This is nonsense," says Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the same IPCC. He laments...

He's the world's most cited climatologist, according to an analysis in the journal of the British Institute of Geographers. He's also the fifth-most-cited physical geographer in the world, and the 11th most cited among all geographers.He has written some 230 articles and five books, including in such fields as geology, limnology, meteorology and archeology.He has twice seen his papers in Environmental Conservation awarded prizes for being "best paper of the year," and he's a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honour, created to recognize "outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment."He's Dr. Reid Bryson,...

Lawrence Solomon's series becomes a book, providing heft to the claim that climate science is not settledGlobal warming has become a question for citizens, and not only scientists. Citizens must decide how serious the threat is and what to do about it, which cures make sense, and which might be worse than the disease. Alas, the answers to these questions depend on scientific issues of fierce complexity that few laymen are capable of confronting directly. So what are we to do? Al Gore has an answer, and in some ways it is a very sound answer. Mr. Gore says, essentially,...

In the 1970s, leading scientists claimed that the world was threatened by an era of global cooling.Based on what we've learned this decade, says George Kukla, those scientists - and he was among them -- had it right. The world is about to enter another Ice Age.Dr. Kukla, in 1972 a member of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences and a pioneer in the field of astronomical forcing, became a central figure in convincing the United States government to take the dangers of climate change seriously. In January of that year, he and another geologist, Robert Matthews of Brown University,...

Michael Griffin aired his doubts about climate-change politics on National Public Radio. Under a barrage of criticism, he recantedThe head of NASA -- the National Aeronautical and Space Association--is "an idiot" and "in denial." He is also "surprisingly naive" and "a fool." With his judgment and competence so lacking, demands abound for his resignation as head of the largest and most accomplished science agency in the world. Those comments and others in the past week have come from scientists shocked to learn that NASA chief Michael Griffin thinks differently than they about global warming. Among the most shocked is one...

"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled." S o said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere...

Germany's Hans von Storch, one of the world's leading climate scientists, believes that climate change is for real and that humans are responsible. He also believes that we shouldn't fear climate change, that predictions of doom are "hysterical" when they aren't "completely idiotic and dubious," and that many of the science establishment's pronouncements on climate change are bereft of scientific merit."Theories of global warming have left laboratories far behind. Now, they are the stuff of Hollywood," he wrote in Der Spiegel, in an article that castigated global warming alarmists for debasing scientific inquiry and intimidating those who would challenge...

If you're the type of person who sets aside money today for the university education of your great-great-great grandchildren, even if it means that you may not be able to afford university tuition for your own children, you may think it sensible for society to invest now in major measures to stop global warming.If you're not this type -- and who in his right mind is -- you should forget about Kyoto-like greenhouse-gas reduction targets and the crash programs that would be required to meet them. Doing so would not only be economically prudent, it would be -- by...