Free Republic

Atmospheric feedback loops can be rather swift, geologically speakingThe time lag between increased quantities of CO2 reaching or leaving the atmosphere and global temperature change may be far shorter than previously thought, according to a new paper, Tightened constraints on the time-lag between Antarctic temperature and CO2 during the last deglaciation published this week by Climate of the Past.The paper states its claims by suggesting other ice-core-based assessments of the correlation between CO2 prevalence and global temperature use samples from a region of Antarctica where ice accumulates slowly, making conclusions on the age of air bubbles difficult. This new research...

I noticed with my morning coffee that Tom Nelson had a Google Trends graph that piqued my interest, so I decided to expand upon it a bit before getting back to work. After looking at my results, the title of this post could just as easily be “off the radar”. Have a look: Source: Google TrendsYou can clearly see when An Inconvenient Truth was released, the 2007 IPCC report and subsequent Nobel prize, and when Climategate occurred. That Gore blip in the summer of 2010 was the “Sex Poodle” episode.Here’s a similar graph with the maximum number of relevant phrases...

ndur Goklany calculated that biofuels policies killed nearly 200,000 people  in 2010 alone. That was before this study showed things may be worse than we suspected. Brazil is the largest sugar cane ethanol producer in the world, but people are burning four times the area of sugar cane plantations than previously realized, and it’s producing far more pollution than they thought. For every unit of energy generated, the ethanol-biofuel use produces a lot less CO2 (plant fertilizer) but more volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), more carbon monoxide, more nitrous oxides, as well as more sulphur dioxides. (See Graph b below).Compared to...

Consistent rain and warm temperatures may have given the Mongols the energy source they needed to conquer Eurasia: grass for their horses (huge amount of grass needed to feed the 10 horses for each Mongol warrior).

First, correcting an error that originated with the blog The Hockey Schtick about not giving appropriate credit. Marcel Crok writes on De staat van het klimaat One of the basic principles of blogging is to give credit when credit is due. I always try to mention the source of my information and most blogs do this using an acronym like h/t (hat tip). This week one of my own blog articles was not referred to as the source for another blog article on The Hockey Schtick. This blog then alerted WUWT? who brought the same news quite loudly and then...

Operation Cabin Q&As (from the Norfolk Police here PDF) The following questions and answers are an abridged version of Norfolk Constabulary’s Operation Cabin media briefing held on Thursday 19 July 2012.How do you know it was an external hack?In outline terms, we know it came via the internet from a number of different IP addresses, in various countries, which may have been proxy servers. The attack was, first of all, into the web server (CRUweb8) in the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the UEA. From there, a link was established to a CRU back-up server (CRUback3).It’s fair to say, the...

German researchers have re-ignited debate over geo-engineering by saying that “seeding” oceans with iron is an effective way to lock up CO2. While the principle behind seeding is simple enough – the iron acts as a fertilizer for phytoplankton, which multiply and consume carbon dioxide as they grow – the topic is fiercely debated. The core of the argument is also simple: it’s probably impossible to predict what other environmental impacts phytoplankton fertilization would have. The researchers, led by Victor Smetacek from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, are reporting the results of a 2004...

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Anthony Watts I’ve never done a double feature before where our Climate Craziness of the Week and Quote of the Week are one and the same. 350.org’s Bill McKibben gets this unique honor.From the what universe does Bill McKibben live in department? While going on about heat waves, he comes up with the ultimate “I don’t understand science” zinger. How long before people stop listening to this guy? I would not have believed he’d be disturbed enough to write this if I hadn’t read it as a direct quote written by his own hand.Hat...

Two major proxy studies, larger than ever, were released in April and June 2012. They show that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) existed, and was similar to current temperatures. These comprehensive studies suggest current temperatures are not unusual, and that itself is not all that surprising — I’ve mentioned before how there are hundreds of proxy studies showing it was as warm or warmer back then. (CO2science has been documenting them.) But these studies are worth a mention because they are so large. Climate models cannot explain what caused the warming 1000 years ago, nor the cooling  300 years ago,...

UPDATE: less than 24 hours after posting this, we already have an end of the world prediction naming global warming, see below. New end of the world book treats climate change just like many other end of times worries that have not come to pass. Weston, FL — (SBWIRE) — 07/16/2012 — The end of the world is not going to happen within our lifetimes. That’s the word from Justin Deering, author of The End of the World Delusion: How Doomsayers Endanger Society. “We’re bombarded with end-of-the-world scares practically everywhere you look,” Deering explains. “You hear about it in church, on...

After the hottest half-year on record in the United States, hotter, drier conditions from the Southwest, through the Midwest and across the East Coast from Florida to Maine are forecast to continue through October, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said at a briefing.

While I am sure this summer's drought will have a greater negative impact on the U. S. than hurricane Katrina, it will be reported as a positive for this President and his administration no matter how many mistakes or errors they may make.

It’s business as usual at the Petermann glacier, doing what a glacier does, calving ice into the sea. We reported on another chunk in 2010, four Manhattans in size. Borrowing from an oft used media ploy, at this rate, it will be down to ice cube size in ten years. I wonder though, if we’d ever have noticed any of this without MODIS? Keep that in mind when reading the claims.At left An ice island twice the size of Manhattan has calved from Petermann Glacier off northern Greenland. At right, the 2010 calving, with the crack for the new chunk...

Map of major shale gas basis all over the world from the EIA report World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States .From the AGU Journal Highlights:Replacing coal with natural gas would reduce warmingA debate has raged in the past couple of years as to whether natural gas is better or worse overall than coal and oil from a global warming perspective. The back-and-forth findings have been due to the timelines taken into consideration, the details of natural gas extraction, and the electricity-generating efficiency of various fuels. An analysis by Cathles, which focuses exclusively...

So much for that global “free” market.Scott the trader writes to explain that the EU “CER” credits are the ones people can buy and exchange for Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) but they have sunk to $4. The more expensive $9 EUA units that most commentators mention, are not exchangeable in the Australian market:The EU CER price is equivalent to about A$3.80  per tonne…  Almost $20 below Australia’s fixed price.    These are the products most comparable to Australia’s $23/Tonne as it will be CERs that we can surrender instead of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to satisfy an Australian Clean...

For the 1,000 or so residents of Spicewood Beach in Burnet County, water tanker trucks have become a way of life. Stage 4 water restrictions started in late January. Back then, one truck would bring water to the Spicewood Beach water station. Now, two trucks make the run - eight to ten times a day. Joe Don Dockery is the Burnet County Commissioner for Precinct 4. He says Lake Travis' water levels directly affect the wells in Spicewood Beach. And because lake levels are so low, the system can't supply water to its residents.

Wasn´t global warming supposed to lead to greatly diminished harvests and global food scarcity? Well, tell this to Bill McKibben, Al Gore and the other scarmongers:"Largest ever cereal harvest predicted this year"The world is expected to harvest the largest ever crop of cereals in 2012-13 according to an estimate released by the UN affiliated Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) recently. It is estimated that this year's world cereal production will be a record 2371 million tonnes, marking a 1 percent, or 27 million tonnes increase over 2011.  India is forecast to produce a bumper harvest of 234.4 million tonnes of cereals, up from...

Peru’s government on Monday sent 18 trucks carrying 97,000 blankets to villages in the Andean highlands, where the populations endure freezing temperatures.The blankets were sent to Puno, Apurimac, Ayacucho, Junin, Huancavelica, Huanuco, Ancash and La Libertad regions, daily La Republica reported. The shipment is part of the national government plan to provide support to people who are not properly equipped to weather the cold. Children and the elderly are often the most vulnerable to the cold temperatures, and every year a number of people in the highlands die during Peru’s cold winter months of June through August. Last week, temperatures in the district...

Extreme caution best in assessing future weather Published in The Starphoenix July 6, 2012In the viewpoint article Extreme weather becoming norm (SP, June 28) Lidsay Olson, vice-president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, provides a glimpse of weather extremes for various regions of Canada and warns Canadian to be prepared to live with such extremes over the next several decades. Olson refers to the study on future weather extremes done by Gordon McBean, former assistant deputy minister of Environment Canada. When did Canada witness a climate free of extreme weather, is what Olson fails to explain to Canadians.Extreme weather is...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) science and its promotion involves selection of only material that supports the hypothesis that human CO2 is causing warming and latterly climate change. It is used in everything from tree ring samples chosen to create the hockey stick, to omission of the Milankovitch Effect, and the role of cosmic rays in the formation of low cloud from IPCC computer models.There’s a similar pattern of selective reporting about weather events. People are inundated with reports giving the impression that what is happening is worse then ever before, unusual and therefore due to human activities....