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Posted on July 2, 2012 by Anthony Watts Umbrella Thorn Acacia, Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenyaby Adam Jones – click to order a photo or posterI’ve covered this before, such as when NASA posted satellite data showing that the biosphere is booming thanks to CO2 fertilization. This new study from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany suggests that the Umbrella Thorn Acacia trees will make a comeback. Tree trumps grass to rule the savannasA new study published today in “Nature” by authors from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre and the Goethe University Frankfurt suggests that large parts of Africa’s savannas...

I graphed the EIA data, shown below. What is most interesting is that this is market driven, not mandate driven.Amazing Shale: US CO2 Emissions Plummet Towards 1990 Levelsby John Hanger (via The GWPF)America’s carbon emissions may drop back close to 1990 levels this year. That result would have been thought impossible, even at the end of 2011. But the shale gas revolution makes a reality of many things recently thought impossible. Shale gas production has slashed carbon emissions and saved consumers more than $100 billion per year. Truly astonishing!For US energy-related carbon emissions, fuel switching to gas is back to...

July 2012Over the past nine months I have been writing extensively about how the United States is on the verge of a major positive development.  Late last year, Goldman Sachs jumped on board with a special report to investors.  In the past few months, institutional finance magazines began reporting this major development.  In June, I noticed a handful of television journalists start to talk about it. Newspapers are beginning to write about it as well. What is it?   "It" is the United States becoming energy self-sufficient.  This means that the United States is very close to not needing energy,...

During the pre-dawn hours on Sunday, July 4, 1999 thunderstorms were occurring over portions of the Dakotas. By 6 AM CDT some of the storms formed into a bow echo and began moving into the Fargo, North Dakota area with damaging winds. Thus would begin the "Boundary Waters - Canadian Derecho" that would last for over 22 hours, travel over 1300 miles at an average speed of almost 60 mph, and result in widespread devastation and many casualties in both Canada and the United States (Fig. 1). The following paragraphs describe what happened along the path of this long-lived international...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 3.4 million people were without power in the eastern United States on Saturday from powerful thunderstorms that stretched from Indiana to New Jersey accompanied by record heat. States of emergency were declared in Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia because of overnight storms with hurricane-force winds that knocked down trees and power cables along a 500-mile-long stretch. At least eight people were killed. Forecasters predicted more severe thunderstorms partnered with renewed heat on Saturday. Restoring power in some areas could stretch into next week and utilities in Ohio and Virginia described damage as "catastrophic." "It's going to...

Well, I warned everybody yesterday. That briefing was put together by Climate Nexus, an advocacy and communications group. An accompanying report on heat waves and climate change was released simultaneously at climatecommunication.orgThe usual suspects put that document together. See below.Expert Reviewers: Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric ResearchJerry Meehl, National Center for Atmospheric ResearchJeff Masters, Weather UndergroundRichard Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego Now with a telephone press conference, Climate Nexus seer Michael Oppenheimer says he knows “what global warming looks like”, and it apparently is a hazy yellow-orange.“It looks like heat, it looks like fires,...

It’s time to give all mankind a real chance to enjoy genuine developmentGuest post by Dr. Kelvin KemmThe Rio+20 World Environmental Conference has come and gone. The “Plus 20” comes from the fact that it took place twenty years after the first such conference, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Between these dates, I was a delegate at the 2002 world environment conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ever since 1992 I have watched the eco-evolution taking place.There is a good side and a bad side. The good side is that general world environmental awareness has been enhanced. That...

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Anthony Watts Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. reports that there’s a new paper out with a fun title, based on that famous for Robert A. Heinlein quote : Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.“The Climate Is Not What You Expect” By S. Lovejoy and D. Schertzer 2012 The abstract reads: (emphasis added by Pielke) Prevailing definitions of climate are not much different from “the climate is what you expect, the weather is what you get”. Using a variety of sources including reanalyses and paleo data, and aided by notions and analysis...

Columbus, OH (my area)... 99 F Indianapolis, IN... 104 F Chicago, IL... 102 F Louisville, KY... 105 F A weak cold front may bring some relief for the weekend, but it will remain quite hot right on through the Holiday. thats my forecast

From the University of California – Santa BarbaraThese are views of vegetation in summer and winter of suburban Minneapolis landscapes from the 500 foot tall KUOM radio tower where measurements for the study were made. In what might be the first study to report continuous measurements of net CO2 exchange of urban vegetation and soils over a full year or more, scientists from UC Santa Barbara and the University of Minnesota conclude that not only is vegetation important in the uptake of the greenhouse gas, but also that different types of vegetation play different roles. Their findings will be published...

Full Title:******************************************************************** Mann at Orange County Water Conference – emotional presentation, polar bears threatened, still thinks snows of Kilimanjaro are receding due to ‘climate change’****************************************************************Readers may recall: The question put to Dr. Mann at Disneyland today where WUWT regular Roger Sowell was one of the rare skeptics that got to ask Dr. Mann a question.The video is now online of the event.Sowell’s question starts at around 59:35 minutes, Mann’s answer ends about 1:03:10 UPDATE:Dr. Mann’s slide presentation is available at this link. Note the polar bear on the ice floe.http://www.ocwatersummit.com/   backup link: MichaelMann_OCWS  (PDF 24mb)I find it fascinating that Mann...

Full Title:******************************************************* Court upholds EPA’s greenhouse gas rules for autos – but lacks jurisdiction on stationary sources like power plantsD.C. Appeals Court OKs EPA Rules on Greenhouse GasesFrom Rueters By Ayesha RascoeWASHINGTON (Reuters) – An appeals court on Tuesday upheld the first-ever U.S. proposed regulations governing heat-trapping greenhouse gases, handing a setback to major industries like coal-burning utilities and a victory to the Obama administration and environmental groups.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously ruled that the EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide is a public danger and setting limits for emissions from cars and light trucks...

Downtown Los Angeles as seen from American Airlines flight from Japan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)SkepticalScience recently published a post titled Mercury rising: Greater L.A. to heat up an average 4 to 5 degrees by mid-century. It’s a cross post of a UCLA press release with the same title. It struck me odd, because we recently showed that Western North American land surface temperatures have declined in recent years. Refer to Figure 6 in the post IPCC Models vs Observations – Land Surface Temperature Anomalies for the Last 30 Years on a Regional Basis. The press release is based on the Hall...

From the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) another Stephan Rahmstorf scare projection, so important they couldn’t even wait for it to be put on the NCC website before sending off this press release to Eurekalert (see weblink at end of story which is DOA as of 10PM PST 6/24). Significant sea-level rise in a 2-degree warming worldSea levels around the world can be expected to rise by several meters in coming centuries, if global warming carries onThe study is the first to give a comprehensive projection for this long perspective, based on observed sea-level rise over the past...

Take care of yourselves!

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Anthony Watts Delusion is a big problem with the green crowd By Stephen Murgatroyd, Troy Media The draft text for discussion at Rio +20 – the UN conference on sustainable development – makes clear that the summit itself is a waste of energy and time. Even the environmental non-government organizations attending it think so.Jim Leape, international director-general of World Wildlife Fund, hoped that the document would be renegotiated: “It’s pathetic. It’s appalling. If this becomes the final text the last year has been a colossal waste of time.” Friends of the Earth are even...

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Anthony Watts United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (Photo credit: Wikipedia)The UN’s Rio+20 agenda would harm health, welfare and nature – and make poverty permanent Guest post by David Rothbard and Craig Rucker Twenty years ago, the Rio de Janeiro “Earth Summit” proclaimed that fossil fuel-induced climate change had brought our planet to a tipping point, human civilization to the brink of collapse, and numerous species to the edge of extinction. To prevent these looming disasters, politicians, bureaucrats and environmental activists produced a Declaration on Environment and Development, a biodiversity treaty, Agenda...

I wrote yesterday about the unprecedented way the UN was locking out anyone at Rio that was not part of an official government delegation. More than ever before, the UN is not even pretending to to serve the people of the world. Even the facade is gone. The rules have changed since Monckton, Watts Up and the internet spoiled the party at Durban. All the heroic NGO’s have been blocked from the negotiations (as well as those evil free market libertarians). They are only there for the theatrics. The real action goes on behind closed doors, in what Monckton calls...

The West Coast will see an ocean several inches higher in coming decades, with most of California expected to get sea levels a half foot higher by 2030, according a report released Friday. The study by the National Research Council gives planners their best look yet at how melting ice sheets and warming oceans associated with climate change will raise sea levels along the country's Pacific coast. It is generally consistent with earlier global projections, but takes a closer look at California, Oregon and Washington. Although the 6 inches expected for California by 2030 seem minor, the report estimated that...

HPP dust violates air quality standards, health agency says By TOM CALLIS Tribune-Herald staff writer Fifty-three years after its inception, the dust has yet to settle over the issue of unpaved roads in Hawaiian Paradise Park. If anything, it might just be about to get kicked up again. The state Department of Health on June 14 issued an informal notice of violation to the Hawaiian Paradise Park Owners Association over its dirt roads, saying that the dust produced by passing vehicles on dry days violates air quality regulations. While it may not sound menacing, association President June Conant worries that...