Free Republic

PHOENIX - Rescue crews were kept busy with several water rescues after a monsoon surge that brought extensive flooding to Arizona, trapped residents in their homes, closed a major freeway, and paralyzed traffic on several surface streets Tuesday morning. A flash flood warning for Maricopa County and surrounding areas was extended until 3 p.m. Tuesday. Structures were demolished, heavy equipment was carried away and ranches were covered by the raging waters in New River, where more than 4 inches of rain was reported.

The weather is pounding the Mexican capital for second straight day, and some areas are already flooded. ... Also, Periférico avenue, an important road surrounding Mexico City, continues facing flooding in the northern area of the city.

A long report. A more active hurricane period. Warm water in the Gulf of Mexico may attract hurricanes. Late starting El Nino. Relationship of temperature of Pacific to multivariate ENSO index. (Bob Tisdale update here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/12/the-201415-el-nino-part-15-august-2014-update-an-el-nino-mulligan/) 1-15 days out same pattern that has held most of the summer with cool upper Midwest. Texas getting warmer. While California will get some rain this winter, it won't make up for the shortfall, and the Pacific is cooling again, which means more drought ahead. Sea ice swinging toward "normal" in the north, and heading toward overall record in the south.

Many scientists and non-scientists are discussing "Global Warming" (or as it is increasingly being called "Anthropogenic Climate Change" or ACC). ACC would simply be an interesting topic for discussion if it were not for the politicization, polarization, and sensationalism that have accompanied the science.

Rupert Darwall is the author of Age of Global Warming (and earning excellent reviews). Darwall has a gift for converting tricky scientific concepts into a story. This month in the City Journal, he beautifully summarizes and updates the story of Murry Salby. He’s interviewed Richard Lindzen and others, and discusses Salby’s work in the context of the way heretics are marginalized. I helped Rupert with some of the background. It’s controversial science, a complex situation, with irrelevant baggage to boot. But that’s exactly the place where science communicators — or in the case of Rupert, excellent historians — are most...

There are waves piling on waves in the weather.A new press release tells us that there have been an “exceptional” number of weather extremes in summer. Weather extremes in the summer — such as the record heat wave in the United States that hit corn farmers and worsened wildfires in 2012 — have reached an exceptional number in the last ten years. Human-made global warming can explain a gradual increase in periods of severe heat, but the observed change in the magnitude and duration of some events is not so easily explained. Heatwaves lend themselves to headlines. Not only are...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit Wednesday to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, where he met the tiny nation’s leaders and commemorated the ferocious World War II battles fought on Guadalcanal. Kerry met with Solomon’s Prime Minister Gordon Lilo and Governor General Frank Kabui to discuss sustainable development, ocean preservation and how the islands’ 600,000 residents are coping with the effects of climate change. …

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — A woman and her two young daughters found dead in her stifling car in a middle school parking lot died from accidental heatstroke, the Maryland medical examiner's office said Tuesday. The formal cause of death was hyperthermia and environmental heat exposure, spokesman Bruce Goldfarb said. Allison Keyonda Pluck, also known as Allison Lancaster, 32, was found dead in her silver Nissan sedan June 16 along with the bodies of Shania Gill, 18 months, and Shameka Gill, 6 months. The mother was reclined in the driver's seat and the girls were strapped in their child seats with...

It's really been a more or less normal summer for New York, hysteria notwithstanding, and summer isn't over for another three weeks, meteorologically speaking. Hawaii did not get hit with any hurricanes; one went north, the other disintegrated. Everything else is pretty much well following the forecast.

When Ideology Trumps Science: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos on Global Warming Jay W. Richards August 6, 2014 1:15 PM | Permalink I finally had a chance to watch the twelfth, penultimate episode of Cosmos, "The World Set Free." I was out of the country in June when it originally aired, but since there's no doubt the series is headed into the schools and remains relevant, I'll take this opportunity to comment. The episode stands out from most previous installments. Just when we've grown accustomed to circuitous narrative threads with obscure segues from one topic to the next, we get...

Remember how CO2 is supposed to cause warmer winters, and warmer nights? Well now CO2 also produces cold snaps. No matter what weather you get, there is a citation to blame CO2. Nature (the formerly great science journal) and Northeastern University have produced another permutation of outputs from models we know are broken. The first line in the press release is false and smugly so: “most sci­en­tists — 97 per­cent of them, to be exact — agree that the tem­per­a­ture of the planet is rising and that the increase is due to human activ­i­ties….”  10 seconds on Google would have...

Some streets looked more like a raging river. One police officer even tried blocking traffic with his car, while water moved in all around him. "This is really a shock. I didn't expect it, said Albuquerque resident, Rein Whitt-Pritchette. "I've been in Albuquerque since 1971. I rarely have ever seen that kind of rain before."

'Some say that it is a miracle, while others are calling it a curse': Tunisian journalistTunisians are enjoying escaping the heat of summer by swimming in the mystery lake. (Pic @ Instagram) Nobody knows how, when or why… yet. The fact is, a lake has mysteriously appeared suddenly in the middle of Tunisian desert. No scientific explanation has been forthcoming as yet for for ‘Gafsa Beach’, discovered by shepherds three weeks ago. Authorities have issued a warning, according to a report in the Independent, that the water, which started off a crystalline blue and has since turned a murky green...

Thorough forecast for August.

Details emerging from a meeting held last month in Venezuela provide some rare insight into the actual mission of numerous groups that purportedly exist to stop the ostensible dangers of global warming. According to reports, the United Nations sponsored the four-day event, which was attended by representatives from 130 environmentalist groups. While the end result was a lengthy report providing an overview of the alliance’s proposals, the basic message can be summed up in two words: end capitalism. Fellowship of the Minds provided its analysis of the Spanish language document published after the meeting ended July 18. According to the...

I have a question for all those scientific Freepers. In a world where most of the surface is water, doesn't global warming mean more evaporation and hence more fresh water (i.e. rain and snow)?And won't the resultant rains serve to cool said planet.

I just thought I would point out - as a matter of curiosity - that here we are, at the end of July, about to go into August, and the temperature at my house (in upstate New York) is at present 51° F. When I was growing up in this same neck of the woods, we would typically have a week or so of temperatures above 90° right about now, and a few times would go over 100°, at least for a day or two. Also interesting to note that - at this very moment - "AccuWeather" is saying that...

For at least 114 120 years, climate “scientists” have been claiming that the climate was going to kill us…but they have kept switching whether it was a coming ice age, or global warming. (A timeline of claims follows, updated to 2014)

The price of a stabilized green power grid is very steep, one could say it is like a “hockey stick”Story submitted by Eric Worrall  (h/t John Droz)Coal and gas electricity companies are being paid up to 400x times the wholesale price of power, in return for helping to stabilize the German electricity grid.According to Bloomberg, “Germany’s push toward renewable energy is causing so many drops and surges from wind and solar power that the government is paying more utilities than ever to help stabilize the country’s electricity grid.” “At the beginning, this market counted for only a small portion of...

I don’t think Gina McCarthy had thought this through. McCarthy to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: “And the great thing about this proposal is it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It’s about increased efficiency at our plants…It’s about investments in renewables and clean energy. It’s about investments in people’s ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units,” “This is an investment strategy that will really not just reduce carbon pollution but will position the United States to continue to grow economically in every state, based...