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NBC's Katy Tur, responding to an article in the New Yorker about climate, looked into the camera and asked, "How pointless is my life? And how pointless are the decisions that I make on a day-to-day basis when we are not focused on climate change every day, when it's not leading every one of our newscasts?" It's a safe bet that not only will climate change not lead all newscasts, it will not even lead Tur's very often. And the reason is not any of those often proffered for failure to act in ways activists prefer. It won't be that...

Former President Barack Obama recently continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, President Donald Trump. Obama's charges are paradoxical. On one hand, Obama seems to believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current economic boom and the emergence of the United States as the world's largest energy producer. But Obama also has charged that Trump's policies are pernicious and failing. Apparently, Obama believes that all of Trump's successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump's setbacks are his own. Obama certainly forgets the old rule: Presidents, fairly or not, get both credit and...

The French government expects the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests in Paris this weekend could be more violent than ever, despite President Emmanuel Macron buckling on fuel tax hikes. The Élysée Palace, seat of President Emmanuel Macron, announced to French media they are expecting “great violence” on Saturday as Yellow Vest protestors have announced “Act IV” of their nearly four-week-long protest against the Macron regime that was initially sparked by a rise in fuel taxes, franceinfo reports. According to the Élysée, they expect “a hard core of several thousand people” to arrive in Paris on Saturday with the intent to...

PARIS - France hunkered down for another wave of potentially violent protests on Saturday as embattled President Emmanuel Macron planned to address the nation next week over public fury at the high cost of living, senior allies said. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said the three-week-old “yellow vest” revolt had “created a monster” and vowed police would have no tolerance for violence, with much of Paris in lockdown and tens of thousands of police deployed nationwide. Castaner warned that radicals would likely again infiltrate the protest movement - a backlash against high living costs but also, increasingly, a revolt against Macron...

While world leaders gather in Katowice, Poland, for the COP24 climate summit, protesters in the streets of Paris have successfully forced French President Emmanuel Macron's hand, undercutting his efforts to impose a carbon tax on French energy sales. Macron has made climate change and lowering greenhouse gases a central component of both his domestic and foreign policies, only to face dramatic failure at the hands of his "yellow vest" countrymen. Macron's popularity has been low in France for months, and has now fallen to just a 23% approval rating. But the rioting across his country sends a frightening signal to...

PARIS - Vincent Picard describes himself as a “militant ecologist.” But when protesters took to the streets to express their rage over a planned increase in France’s fuel tax, Mr. Picard joined their ranks. He acknowledges that the tax might encourage the conservation considered critical for a healthy planet. But with the nearest train station 35 minutes away, he has to drive to work every day. “I am conscious that we have reached the end of fossil fuels and that we have to modify our habits,” said Mr. Picard, a 32-year-old pastry maker from northern France. But, he added, “You...

The French police forces including the special CRS riot police will be as fully mobilized as possible in Paris and other locations tomorrow as the "yellow vests" protests move into their next phase of mobilization swelled by new supporters. 125-thousand plus were estimated to have protested last Saturday and its quite possible that the protests may be even larger tomorrow. The Prime Minister of France's increasingly unpopular President Emmanuel Macron, Edouard Philippe, appeared on the evening television news Thursday to say 89-thousand police are mobilized for tomorrow's protests....

PARIS - French authorities will close dozens of museums, tourism sites and shops on Saturday, including the Eiffel Tower and Louvre, fearing a recurrence of last week’s violence in Paris, officials said on Thursday. “We cannot take the risk when we know the threat,” Culture Minister Franck Riester told RTL radio, adding that far-right and far-left agitators were planning to hijack rallies by “yellow vest” protesters in Paris. He said the Louvre museum, Orsay museum, the two operas, and the Grand Palais were among the sites that would be closed a week after rioters looted and defaced the Arc de...

French President Emmanuel Macron has scrapped a fuel tax rise amid fears of new violence, after weeks of nationwide protests and the worst rioting in Paris in decades. An official with the Elysee palace told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the president decided to get rid of the tax. Edouard Philippe told lawmakers that “the tax is now abandoned” in the 2019 budget, and the government is “ready for dialogue.” The budget can be adjusted or renegotiated through the course of the year. Three weeks of protests have left four people dead and were a massive challenge to Macron....

As part of campaign highlighting the need for immediate action to reduce the impacts of fossil fuel-driven climate change, Finnish technology group Wärtsilä has unveiled a controversial idea that envisions lifeboats for buildings on land in flood-prone areas.

France’s violent Yellow Vest protests are now about many domestic concerns, but it’s no accident that the trigger was a fuel-tax hike. Nothing reveals the disconnect between ordinary voters and an aloof political class more than carbon taxation. The fault line runs between anti-carbon policies and economic growth, and France is a test for the political future of emissions restrictions. France already is a relatively low-carbon economy, with per-capita emissions half Germany’s as of 2014. French governments have nonetheless pursued an “ecological transition” to further squeeze carbon emissions from every corner of the French economy. The results are visible in...

France suspends controversial fuel tax after weeks of unrest By James McAuley December 4 at 6:40 AM PARIS — French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced Tuesday that the French government would temporarily suspend the controversial carbon tax plan that triggered weeks of often violent protests around the country. To help curb climate change, the government had proposed a slew of new carbon taxes that were slated to take effect in January 2019 and were designed to wean consumers off diesel and other polluting fuels and to favor electric cars. But the price hikes those taxes represented triggered a wave of...

KATOWICE, Poland (AP) — As leaders attending the U.N.’s annual climate summit heard fresh warnings about the dire consequences of leaving global warming unchecked, a new issue emerged Monday as a pressing concern: how to persuade millions of workers their industry can’t have a future if humanity is to have one.Hosting the talks in the heart of its coal region of Silesia, Poland tried to set the tone for the two-week meeting by promoting the idea of a “just transition” for miners and other workers facing layoffs as countries adopt alternative energy sources. “We are trying to save the world...

I had just walked past a local Starbucks in North Center Chicago, when news arrived on my cell phone that the Washington, DC City Council had unanimously agreed “in a preliminary vote” to require that 100% of the District’s electricity must come from renewable sources by 2032. Where can they possibly put hundreds of huge wind turbines and massive solar arrays in DC’s 37,000 urban acres, I wondered.Then, just a few hours later, I received an email from a marketing and public relations firm. “Starbucks IL Stores Going 100 Percent Renewable,” it announced. The email and a related news release explained...

RUSH: So I’m watching CNN this morning, I have it on, all of a sudden I look up and I see Christine Todd Whitman. Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and quintessential Republican establishment type, RINO, if you will, right out of the McCain wing of the party. You know what she’s talking about? The need for serious climate change action. She’s quoting from the Trump administration climate change report which, for about the gazillionth time now in the last 30 years, warns us that we only have 10 years left to address these dire circumstances...

It is incredibly important to understand that as the weather turns bitterly cold in the north, people will begin to migrate south. This not merely cause the Greeks to become the Sea Peoples, but during the Year without a Summer in 1816 even in the States when six inches of snow fell in June and every month of the year had a hard frost, people began to migrate. The temperatures had dropped to as low as 40 degrees in July and August in New York City during 1816. People also called it ‘Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death’ and the...

There is a lot more to Climate Change than the dire predictions that we will be eating each other by now. The Sahara Desert was once lush and green. Then the weather systems shifted and the once fertile land turns to desert. The Sphinx is believed to have the face of Khafra of the 4th dynasty during the Old Kingdom which was carved perhaps around 2500BC. Some believe that the Sphinx predates the Egyptians and was actually a lion because there appear to be what some claim are water erosion marks. If true, then the original Sphinx may have existed...

Believe it or not, pretend Scientists are actuall proposing to create a synthetic Volcanic Winter by spraying sun-dimming chemicals into the Earth’s atmosphere the same as a volcanoe when it erupts. These pretend research scientists at Harvard and Yale universities have published in the journal Environmental Research Letters proposing to inject an aerosol (SAI) to reduce the rate of global warming. They have propsed a completely unproven attempt to alter the planet using a technique involving spraying large amounts of sulfate particles into the Earth’s lower stratosphere at altitudes as high as 12 miles. They argue to deliver the sulfates...

In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency called a meeting of atmospheric scientists. I remember well the meeting in a theater-like lecture room in the San Francisco Bay Area. I knew the atmospheric scientists from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Stanford Research Institute, and local colleges. A man in a suit walked up to the lectern. He told us: Global warming is a new national problem. Human CO2 emissions cause dangerous global warming. Future research funding will focus on predicting climate disasters.

While NASA has now confirmed that the outer atmosphere is getting cooler, it seems desperately insane for people to keep denying the possibility the Global Cooling is taking place rather than Global Warming when the former brings famine and the latter brings economic expansion as civilizations rise. The rise of Rome was due to global warming as was the case after the Dark Age when they call that the Medieval Warming Period which was 950 to 1300AD. The concern from just a technical model perspective is that the warming period we have had post-1600 and the low of the Little...