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A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month. A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science. He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly. He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much...

Recently, it was revealed that Volkswagen had been duping diesel-emissions tests on some of its high-end environmentally friendly cars. People were outraged. The CEO resigned. About the same time, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley told the Alberta Chambers of Commerce that her province had better get its environmental house in order or it would have measures imposed upon it. She also said that Alberta has “bad air.”Really? I challenge that statement. In 2011, Canada’s air was judged to be the third highest quality in the world. In 2006, Environment Canada reported that Red Deer was an unusual hot spot for poor...

A crucial process has been identified to explain the reason why dissolved organic carbon (DOC) levels in the deep oceans are constant despite a continuous supply from the surface ocean. This research has been published today in the journal Nature Geoscience and was conducted by scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and The University of Southampton. Dr Jeff Hawkes, the lead author of this study, from the NOC said: "There has been a long outstanding question about whether hydrothermal vents are a source or sink of organic carbon to the oceans. We have shown that hydrothermal vent fluids contain...

There are so many minor stories that are embarrassing to liberals to blog about this afternoon, it’s hard to choose just one. Should I blog the fact that gutless Hillary Clinton waited for the Pope’s arrival to dump the news that she’s taking the predictable orthodox left-wing position on the Keystone Pipeline? Should I blog about left-wing writers being so stupid that they don’t realize the word “retarded” has a non-slur definition? Or should I blog the fact that America’s been planning the Pope’s visit for months and somehow Obama still couldn’t quite get to the airport on time? When...

Full title: Many global warming studies may be wrong as carbon dating found to be highly unreliable for organic matter over 30,000 years old Radiocarbon dating, which is used to calculate the age of certain organic materials, has been found to be unreliable, and sometimes wildly so - a discovery that could upset previous studies on climate change, scientists from China and Germany said in a new paper. Their recent analysis of sediment from the largest freshwater lake in northeast China showed that its carbon clock stopped ticking as early as 30,000 years ago, or nearly half as long as...

The United Nations body that oversees greenhouse gas reductions is reeling from another cap-and-trade scandal that may have put 600 million tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere — roughly speaking, the annual CO2 output of Canada or Britain — while the emissions were ostensibly suppressed, according to an independent study. In the process, the fraudsters, largely in Russia and Ukraine, were likely able to transfer credits for more than 400 million tons of their apparently bogus greenhouse savings by April 2015 into Europe's commercial carbon trading system — the largest in the world — thereby undermining that continent's ambitious...

Whether, how, and why forest stands have changed their growth patterns over the last century are still hotly disputed questions The world’s great forests have long been recognized as the lungs of the earth. They fix carbon and produce oxygen. So it should come as a pleasant surprise to hear that there are over three trillion trees on earth, according to a new assessment. The figure is more than seven times as big as the previous best estimate, which counted perhaps 400 billion at most. It has been produced by Thomas Crowther and colleagues, from Yale University, who combined a...

....Obama gave a doom and gloom speech yesterday at the Global Leadership in the Arctic (GLACIER) conference in Alaska to build momentum for the U.N. climate deal in Paris this December. So far less than one third of countries have submitted plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions by the Wall Street Journal’s count. According to Obama, “Climate change is happening faster than we’re acting” and the world is facing a future of more fires, more melting, more warming, more suffering. But there are at least two major problems with his focus on global warming as he’s presented it in Alaska....

American Chemical Society Summary: Finding a technology to shift carbon dioxide, the most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas, from a climate change problem to a valuable commodity has long been a dream. Now, a team of chemists says they have developed a technology to economically convert atmospheric CO2 directly into highly valued carbon nanofibers for industrial and consumer products.

Gov. John Hickenlooper has pledged that Colorado will comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, but this effort to cut so-called “CO2 pollution” could come at a dear price to the state’s coal industry. ... Colorado is among the top states in coal production and consumption. In the year 2013, 64 percent of energy produced in Colorado came from coal, 20 percent from natural gas, and around 15 percent from various renewables including hydroelectric, biomass, solar and wind. The history of Colorado’s coal mining industry stretches over the past two centuries. Not to mention, coal jobs have a multiplier effect...

Obama is petty and vengeful. At this point, anything with the words "Green Energy" might as well be read as "Screw the Middle Class". After being shot down by the court, Obama's Green Energy plan has risen from the grave meaner and nastier than ever. First of all it's been retooled to hit Republican states hardest. ... Behind the euphemisms, the Thug-in-Chief is doing his usual petty bit by lashing out at opponents while seeking to punish them. And backed in is a Carbon Tax plan, which will save the planet by enriching a handful of billionaires and rip you...

No, this isn’t about sex. It’s about carbon footprints -- yours, mine and that of just about every other living creature that walks, crawls or flies over the face of God’s green earth. Once the California state legislature passed America’s first full-blown cap and trade law, we Californians all became very hot stuff indeed! I know because I just took the Nature Conservancy’s online test for my personal carbon footprint. Identifying myself as a single person living alone in a one-bedroom apartment who hasn’t done much of anything special to control his energy use, I learned the cost of my...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Heat-trapping pollution from U.S. power plants hit a 27-year low in April, the Department of Energy announced Wednesday. A big factor was the long-term shift from coal to cleaner and cheaper natural gas, said Energy Department economist Allen McFarland. Outside experts also credit more renewable fuel use and energy efficiency. Carbon dioxide — from the burning of coal, oil and gas — is the chief greenhouse gas responsible for man-made global warming. "While good news for the environment, we certainly would not want to assume that this trend will continue and that we can simply relax," said...

Using powerful computer simulations, researchers from Brown University have identified a material with a higher melting point than any known substance. The computations, described in the journal Physical Review B (Rapid Communications), showed that a material made with just the right amounts of hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon would have a melting point of more than 4,400 kelvins (7,460 degrees Fahrenheit). That's about two-thirds the temperature at the surface of the sun, and 200 kelvins higher than the highest melting point ever recorded experimentally. The experimental record-holder is a substance made from the elements hafnium, tantalum, and carbon (Hf-Ta-C). But these...

Republicans are investigating what they call "improper influence" from a national green group on the Obama administration's signature Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate change regulation. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as well as Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are demanding the EPA and the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) hand over documents on the organization's involvement in drafting the proposed carbon pollution rules. The investigation is based on a New York Times ' report that said the NRDC provided the blueprint used for the rules, and "heavily influenced the president's proposal." While...

When the Green Mountain power company, Vermont’s largest utility, announced earlier this year it will be buying nuclear power from New Hampshire’s Seabrook reactor, many environmentalists felt betrayed. “This is exactly why we closed Vermont Yankee, because we didn’t want any nuclear power,” they complained. But consumer demands left Green Mountain with no other choice. Nuclear is the ultimate reliable source of power – reactors operate more than 90 percent of the time – and Green Mountain needs back-up in case other sources stop working or if demand exceeds supply on a hot summer day. Vermont is struggling with its...

Bill Gates recently noted that the cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is ‘beyond astronomical.’ On June 30, one day after the Supreme Court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of mercury emissions from power plants, resident Obama committed the United States to the goal of generating 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. This would nearly triple the amount of wind- and solar-generated electricity on the national grid. The EPA ran afoul of the law by failing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before it acted to reduce mercury emissions from coal-power plants. There is no objective...

The unfolding Greek financial crisis is front page news. The repercussions – bank runs, unsustainable debts, deadlocked creditors – could easily lead to major consequences worldwide. However misconceived the Euro currency was, its downfall will be painful on a global scale. How much of Greece’s current economic problems were caused by the made Hellenic dash into renewable energy? The answer, unsurprisingly, is most likely quite a lot. Greece, like many small European economies, has placed a substantial focus on green energy, seeing it as a quick leg up into the big league – an easy way to attract generous funding...

The Supreme Court overturned the Obama administration’s landmark air quality rule on Monday, ruling the Environmental Protection Agency did not properly consider the costs of the regulation. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices ruled that the EPA should have taken into account the costs to utilities and others in the power sector before even deciding whether to set limits for the toxic air pollutants it regulated in 2011. The case, Michigan v. EPA, centers on the EPA’s first limits on mercury, arsenic and acid gases emitted by coal-fired power plants, known as mercury and air toxics (MATS). Opponents, including the...

The Undercurrent posted a clip of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush taking question while walking through the hall at the Road to Majority Conference sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition in which he said he “embraces” the current “reduction of carbon emissions.” When asked about his climate change position Jeb said, “I continue to embrace the reduction of carbon emissions that have taken place.”