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Judge stalls approved Montana coal mine expansion in 2nd successful suit citing climate change. The U.S. Interior Department should not have approved the expansion of a southeastern Montana coal mine without taking a closer look at its effect on the environment, a federal judge said about a lawsuit arguing the government ignored coal's contributions to climate change. Environmental groups sued the Interior Department after it approved an expansion of the Spring Creek Coal mine in 2012. The case marks the second time conservationists have used worries over climate change to successfully challenge approval of a coal mine after it had...

First, United Nations officials label bacon and deli meats as carcinogens, and now scientists are claiming that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide are not only heating the planet, they’re making people dumber. A new study by the Harvard School of Public Health claims “carbon dioxide (CO2) has a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making,” according to ThinkProgress, a left-wing advocacy website. Former Vice President Al Gore wasted no time tweeting out ThinkProgress’ in-depth article, trying to link higher carbon dioxide levels to lower cognition in humans. The Harvard study exposed 24 people to office environments with varying...

A couple of days ago, there was a quite successful thread here entitled Top Physicist Freeman Dyson: Obama 'Took the Wrong Side' on Climate Change. As an admirer and follower of Professor Dyson, I enjoyed it greatly, and posted several items on it. That thread got me interested in Dyson once again, and in looking for Dyson material I found this remarkable lecture on YouTube. I believe it is worth anyone's time to listen to in its entirety. At a little more than an hour in length, it is a bit long for one sitting, but I am sure most...

Open the Books, a government watchdog organization has put out a ,report that reveals that the EPA spends millions on buying military equipment, including guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear. Forgive me, but when I think of the EPA, modern warfare does not become the first image that crosses my mind. I have a real hard time wrapping my mind around the EPA needing amphibious assault ships. And can they even be operated in waters polluted by millions of gallons of orange mine sludge? I admit I am somewhat curious to what...

On September 24, 2015, the federal Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) published a Notice of Proposed Withdrawal (“BLM notice”), proposing to withdraw from mineral location and entry federal lands identified as “sagebrush focal areas” in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. The BLM notice commences a two-year temporary segregation period, prohibiting location and entry of new mining claims on BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands in these sagebrush focal areas. If the BLM decides to withdraw the area at the end of the segregation period, the withdrawal will last up to 20 years, but could be extended in the...

At least it was sustainable fair trade carbon neutral corruption. John Ashe, the UN General Assembly president, has been busted on corruption charges. A former president of the U.N. General Assembly "sold himself and the global institution he led" by allegedly pocketing more than $1 million in bribes to finance a luxury spending spree, according to a federal prosecutor. Ashe, 61, is accused of tax fraud in an alleged conspiracy involving five others, including a billionaire Chinese businessman and a former deputy U.N. ambassador from the Dominican Republic, according to a criminal complaint. Ashe is accused of underreporting his income...

The Fox News report that the Teamsters have decided not to endorse Hillary Clinton’s candidacy at this time, shortly after her pronouncement of her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, does not surprise and shows the peril of trying to be all things to all constituencies. On the one hand, there is a need to placate environmentalists and climate change true believers who oppose the pipeline from Canada. Among them is billionaire Tom Steyer, an eco-zealot who has pledged his fortune in support of Democratic candidates who want to repeal the Industrial Revolution who want us to rely on solar...

Progressive pundits increasingly envision the 2016 presidential election as a “last chance,” as one activist phrased it, to stop “climate change catastrophe.” As this agenda gets ever more radical, the prominence of climate change in the election will grow ever more obvious. The key here is that the green left increasingly does not want to limit or change the mix of fossil fuels, but eliminate them entirely, the faster the better. ... Climate activists such as hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer increasingly couch their policies on theological grounds, one reason why the pope’s intervention was so timely. Stark self-interest is...

While delivering the first address from a pontiff to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis touched on topics ranging from the plight of immigrants to climate change and the death penalty. Many of his comments were lightly delivered and unlikely to elicit much controversy, though the reaction might be different if they were given by another world leader.

White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett is quietly working behind the scenes to build a coalition of major U.S. corporations to back President Barack Obama’s goal of hashing out a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the upcoming United Nations summit in Paris.The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a letter that outlines how, by the end of June, Obama is looking to build a coalition of businesses to show support for UN climate talks. After that, the White House will then try to grow this group of businesses to 250 in the run up to the Paris talks...

The Associated Press announced on its blog today that henceforth it will refer to climate change skeptics less pejoratively, reports Mediaite. The AP explained the changes thusly: Our guidance is to use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science and to avoid the use of skeptics or deniers. [emphasis in original] Some background on the change: Scientists who consider themselves real skeptics – who debunk mysticism, ESP and other pseudoscience, such as those who are part of the Center for Skeptical Inquiry – complain that non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science have usurped the phrase skeptic. They...

George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla is a lead author with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and winner of numerous awards including the International Meteorological Organization Prize, the Rossby Medal of the American Meteorological Society, and the Padma Shri National Award from the President of India. He is currently president of the Institute of Global Environment and Society and a professor of Climate Dynamics. For his expertise, Shukla is amply rewarded by George Mason University with a salary over $250,000 a year. Apparently, though, this isn’t a full time job. It can’t be – because on top of...

Construction workers in California's Santa Cruz mountains were subject to a surprise delay last week when a team of archaeologists took over the site to remove an ancient whale fossil. The project site was expected to have a high potential for archaeological finds, so a monitor was assigned to the Scotts Valley development and found the fossil amid construction vehicles on Sept. 4. This project site is not the only one in California with fossils ... Since the 19th century, paleontologists have been studying the “Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed” near Bakersfield, California, where fossils and bones of ancient whales, seals,...

FAIRBANKS—An early winter storm is expected to dump as much as 18 inches of snow into the heart of Denali National Park and Preserve overnight, causing rangers to temporarily close portions of the road for travelers today. With about 10 inches of snow falling by noon at the Eielson Visitor Center at Mile 66 of the Park Road, crews closed the road to incoming traffic this morning at Mile 53 at Toklat River. The closure was lifted later this afternoon, although a winter weather advisory remains in effect through Monday morning. The conditions mean an uncertain trip for winners of...

DENVER (CBS4) – Colorado’s 2015-2016 Winter season may be one for the record books as El Niño conditions strengthen in the Pacific Ocean. The El Niño forecast released by NOAA suggests a colder winter with more snowfall than normal. Ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have been as much as four degrees warmer than average over the past few months. Historically, this setup has brought more moisture into the state during the winter months, especially southwestern Colorado, but Denver has also seen its largest snowstorms during El Niño years.

“Scientists fear ‘Day After Tomorrow’ climate change,” shouts the headline on MSNBC. According to two new studies, global warming could (supposedly) shut down ocean circulation. This could drop vast stretches of Asia into drought and expose the entire Northern Hemisphere to severe ice and snow. “This change would be sudden and sharp enough to roil civilization—happening in as little as three years and resulting in as much as an 18-degree Fahrenheit drop in average temperatures,” says this article by Tony Dokoupil. Dokoupil tells the story of Jud Partin, a geophysicist at the University of Texas, who gathered new geological data...

Glacier National Park, the top of Logan Pass has been temporarily shut down again, this time because of snow. Glacier announced over the weekend that a section of the Going-to-the-Sun Road between Big Bend on the west side and Jackson Glacier Overlook on the east side is temporarily closed because of winter weather conditions.

The global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere. We provide the first spatially continuous map of forest tree density at a global scale. This map reveals that the global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate. Of these trees, approximately 1.39 trillion exist in tropical and subtropical forests, with 0.74 trillion in boreal regions and 0.61 trillion in temperate regions. Biome-level trends in tree density demonstrate the importance of climate and topography in controlling local tree densities at finer scales, as well...

Every so often you will see articles warning that some species is going extinct. And usually it's not really a species -- you never hear about "leopards" going extinct, usually it's "purple dotted left handed bisexual Nepalese leopards" or some subvariety.  We are assured they are going extinct because fewer have been seen recently. But the Earth is so big, how can we really be sure that some subspecies is going extinct just because we see fewer of them? After all, only three percent of the land mass of the Earth is urbanized. Animals could easily be hidden in...

It seems that scientists were a little off in calculating the number of trees on the planet. You remember trees: they turn CO2 into oxygen and water. In fact, if you buy a “carbon credit,” you are paying to plant trees to buy an indulgence for your private jet travel -- just like Al Gore and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supposedly do. Well, all those calculations of doom over purported CO2-caused global warming may be a little more unsettled. The Wall Street Journal reports: