Free Republic

Just because the motives of many climate change advocates are questionable, even evil, does that mean the entire global warming proposition is a fraud? It is an article of faith among many conservatives that climate change is sham science. Even worse, it is the nexus of a vast conspiracy involving governments, the UN, and climate scientists that is seeking to destroy the industrial economies of the West, create a one world government, and enrich people like Al Gore who have bet a bundle on a reduced carbon emissions future. They believe that either the earth is not warming at all,...

Review provides plenty of evidence that climate science has been and remains an uncertain shambles The last of three British investigations into the notorious Climategate emails, the Independent Climate Change Email Review, landed yesterday and left behind enough cherry-pickable material to give all sides an opportunity to claim modest vindication. Defenders of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, the source of the emails, will be able to spin the 168-page review as proof that the CRU did little wrong. For climate skeptics and others, the review provides plenty of evidence that climate science has been...

The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea. Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend. A slow-down - dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow - is projected by some models of climate change. The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The stream is a key process in the climate of western Europe, bringing heat northwards from the tropics and keeping countries such as the UK 4-6C...

The evidence that human activity is causing global warming is much stronger than previously stated and is found in all parts of the world, according to a study that attempts to refute claims from sceptics. The “fingerprints” of human influence on the climate can be detected not only in rising temperatures but also in the saltiness of the oceans, rising humidity, changes in rainfall and the shrinking of Arctic Sea ice at the rate of 600,000 sq km a decade. The study, by senior scientists from the Met Office Hadley Centre, Edinburgh University, Melbourne University and Victoria University in Canada,...

Last week, Dr. Judith Curry, climate scientist from Georgia Institute of Technology, admitted on Watt's Up With That that climate scientists needed to do a better job of communication in order to reestablish trust after the debacle of Climategate. In reply, both sides, warmist and skeptic, ripped her to shreds. That, Dr. Curry wrote, showed that she had probably got it right. In fact, Dr. Curry doesn't have a clue. If she is talking about communication and trust, then she is merely talking about public relations -- fancy footwork in the dance of politics. Today in America, we have a...

I am not sure how to classify certain global-warming proponents. As I have said many times, the majority of climate scientists are honest, hard working men. Some are more prone to error than others, but that’s life and no cause for alarm. A few are willing to make sharp short cuts, and let pass disqualifying mistakes; but they do so because they feel their results are ultimately correct. Some have said this qualifies them as “hoaxers.” I do not accept this. A hoaxer is a con man, somebody who knows his theory is false, but he promulgates it anyway, for...

In the 10 days since we first blogged about “ClimateGate” — the unauthorized release of e-mails and other material from the Climate Research Unit (C.R.U.) at East Anglia University in Norwich, England — it’s become strikingly clear that one’s view of the issue is deeply colored by his or her incoming biases. No surprise there, but still, the demarcation is clear. One of the best indicators: when you stumble onto a blog post about the topic, you can tell which way the wind is blowing simply by looking at the banner ad at the top of the site: if it’s...