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UN Cuts AIDS Estimates, Will Global Warming Projections Follow? As NewsBusters readers are aware, one of the positions of those not buying into the manmade global warming hysteria is that the United Nations -- whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a large part of the alarmism -- is an organization that has seen more than its share of malfeasance and corruption. The recent scandal surrounding the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program is one example, with problems that eventually plagued UNICEF another. Now, it has been revealed that the U.N. has been exaggerating the AIDS epidemic for many years. As reported [1]...

A "minor planet" with the prosaic name 2006 SQ372 is just over two billion miles from Earth, a bit closer than the planet Neptune. But this lump of ice and rock is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, according to a team of researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II). The discovery of this remarkable object was reported today in Chicago, at an international symposium titled "The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Asteroids to Cosmology." A...

In an email exchange with the editors of On Line Opinion, I have explained why I will not be contributing any further pieces to the site because it has been “captured” by climate change denialists. At the request of Graham Young I am putting my arguments into this last piece for On Line Opinion. At least, it will be my last unless and until the journal returns to the objectives it was set up to pursue. ... There I also explain why I do not presume to engage in arguments about climate science because I do not have the expertise...

McCain and Obama came to Michigan this week touting two all-too-similar energy plans. By Henry Payne Detroit — The presidential fuel follies came careening into Michigan this week, advertising two knights battling over America’s energy future. Upon closer inspection, however, the fix appears to be in: Underneath the rhetorical weaponry, both knights are wearing the same green armor. Barack Obama arrived first at Michigan State to give a typically grandiose speech outlining his plan for a “complete transformation of our economy.” The Arrogant One has been trying to make up to Michigan since he presumed a year ago to tell...

This is absolutely amazing.  I was checking out this article in the Ithaca Journal called "Climate Change 101: Positive Feedback Cycles" based on a pointer from Tom Nelson.The Journal is right to focus on feedback.  As I have written on numerous occasions, the base effects of CO2 even in the IPCC projections is minimal.  Only by assuming unbelievably high positive feedback numbers does the IPCC and other climate modelers get catastrophic warming forecasts.  Such an assumption is hard to swallow - very few (like, zero) long-term stable natural processes (like climate) are dominated by high positive feedbacks (the IPCC...

As a free nation, a democratic nation, and a global superpower, America’s fate, today more than ever, is to midwife and manage the emergence of the first world generation. Not an easy task, as technology and globalization make every surviving cultural tradition anywhere suddenly replaced or confronted by every other on this shrinking planet, and our polity grapples with it all.  It would be surprising indeed if America were not also considered a troubled nation, inflicting and incurring heartbreaking trauma every day in this imperfect world.  But America’s fate is also a stroke of exceptional luck and opportunity.The message for Americans to send the modernizing, globalizing...

IT has been a tough year for the high priests of global warming in the US. First, NASA had to correct its earlier claim that the hottest year on record in the contiguous US had been 1998, which seemed to prove that global warming was on the march. It was actually 1934. Then it turned out the world's oceans have been growing steadily cooler, not hotter, since 2003. Meanwhile, the winter of 2007 was the coldest in the US in decades, after Al Gore warned us that we were about to see the end of winter as we know it....

Are global warming alarmists encouraging children to commit suicide because their carbon footprints supposedly are harming the planet?It certainly appears so in a children's game concocted by the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Science Department, available online. 'Pigs' Should Die YoungThe game is called Planet Slayer. Using it, children can calculate their carbon footprint--how much impact their carbon emissions allegedly have on global warming. The purpose for doing so, children were told in a version of the game that was online in early June, is so they can "find out what age you should die at so you don't use more...

There is a point at which one’s contempt for the environmentalists and their allies is irredeemable. There is no longer the usual excuse that’s there’s room for argument or discussion regarding global warming. Having been labeled “deniers” for years, the sense that the end of this hoax is in sight brings no desire to forgive and forget. Recently, Dr. Roy Spencer, an atmospheric scientist who formerly worked for NASA, testified before a Senate committee. Free now to speak without the impediments of bureaucratic oversight, Dr. Spencer told the committee, “I am pleased to deliver good news from the front lines...

Note to readers who may not understand my position regarding climate change and environmentalism: I support conservation and responsible ecology and action. I do not support alarmism, pseudo science, hypocrisy concerning special interest and excessive governmental intervention into matters which a free market will easily handle much better without imposing additional and unecessary taxes. Please read this post with that in mind. I haven't taken the time to put together a round up of the Enviro-nitwit Supreme and all the other fun, so now seems like a good time. I do want to note one thing though, and that...

“I read somewhere that the sun’s getting hotter every year,” said Tom genially. “It seems that pretty soon the earth’s going to fall into the sun — or wait a minute ... it’s just the opposite — the sun is getting colder every year.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby This is the time of year that we start to get warm again.For years I called it summer, but apparently it is more than that; it is now global warming. And it turns out we all are responsible for it, or so the story goes.In another sign that we have...

".....the End of the world is already near.....As  this same End of the world is drawing nigh , many unusual things will happen-----climatic changes, terrors from heaven, unseasonable tempests, wars, famines, pestilences and earthquakes."    The quotation is from a letter sent by a very famous and influential man to a European head of state. Its author is disclosed at the end of this essay. Climatology is a science. Climatism is an ideology. Climatologists are scientists. Climatists are social or political organizers who abuse climatology in the service of ideologues. Climatology was and still is an investigation of nature. Climatism is the...

Comments and reports about global warming are getting silly and even ridiculous.  Al Gore says we have ten years left. We’re told cooling is due to warming. More rain and flooding and less rain and drought are both due to warming. More hurricanes are predicted while fewer occur. Global temperatures declined as much in the first few months of 2008 as they increased in the previous 100 plus years due to warming. Recently we were told global warming is causing an increase in kidney stones in a travesty of geographic correlation assuming cause and effect. One blogger who began recording,...

WHEN it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six metres (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world. Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 metres (80 feet), with a six-metre rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive — by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of...

My colleague Andy Revkin is doing a great job of point-by-point analysis of Al Gore’s speech today calling for America to rely entirely on carbon-free electricity within 10 years. I’m glad to see Mr. Gore discussing carbon taxes (a topic he once avoided), but I’ve got a few questions about the rest of the speech:1) Can anyone explain why Mr. Gore keeps hurting his own cause with junk science? Andy gives him a deserved smackdown for saying there “seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory.” I can understand why Mr. Gore felt he needed this sort of...

Australian doctors have published in a medical journal the case of a 17-year old held for observation, suffering the first observed case of “climate change delusion phenomenon” (CCD). It seems that he suffered from fears that “due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead to days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies”. This particular product of modern education techniques “was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood…He also…had visions of apocalyptic events”. Where ever would he get such an idea?...

The organisers’ graphic prediction on how global warming will affect La Manga has caused sales of houses in the coastal area to drop by 50 percent. MADRID - A group of real estate developers and property owners in La Manga del Mar Menor - a spit of sandy, low-lying coastal land and Murcia's premier beach resort - are threatening to take Greenpeace to court over its graphic predictions of what global warming may do to the area, which they say have caused house prices to plummet. The lawsuit, which the plaintiffs plan to present unless Greenpeace agrees to an out...

If there were a Society of Global Warming Alarmists, Bill McKibben might get kicked out for being too much of a worry wart . . . You've probably seen those phone-message forms with boxes to be checked in ascending order of urgency ranging from "FYI—no need to return call" all the way up to "the future of Western civilization hangs in the balance." We might see that last category as light-hearted exaggeration, but it's no laughing matter to McKibben. In his jeremiad in today's LA Times literally entitled "Civilization's last chance," McKibben solemnly declares that "the world looks a little...

If you’re not too concerned about global warming, you’re probably a regular American. If you think, however, that it’s on par with World War II as a threat to the nation, you’re the managing editor of Time magazine.Al Gore’s “We” ad campaign drew a parallel between fighting global warming and storming the beaches of Normandy. Then Time took the iconic photo of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima and replaced the Stars and Stripes with a tree.“[W]e say there needs to be an effort along the lines of preparing for World War II to combat global warming and climate...

PARIS (AP) -- Negotiators from the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases wrapped up another round of climate talks yesterday by clashing over how deeply to cut the heat-trapping gases they put into the atmosphere. The delegates from 16 nations scheduled more talks next month in trying to produce a new climate accord. Addressing the negotiators, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned that warming is threatening food supplies and risks sparking a dozen Darfur-like conflicts among displaced, starving people around the world. He said water shortages and rivalry over farmland and fishing resources already are "having a considerable impact on security,"...

A few things came to mind about the new Al Gore ad campaign, and his appearance with wife Tipper on CBS’s 60 Minutes last night. The first was the confused nature of the claimed target of this largest ad campaign ever, at least according to the Washington Post. Gore has repeatedly insisted (and 60 Minutes reiterated the claim) that the public are overwhelmingly with him, and that it is therefore the too-timid lawmakers who must be influenced; but the ad spokesman says it is aimed at influencing the public.  They are indeed walking a fine line here, because for their...

Welcome to the Common-Sense Environmentalism Issue Suite, a comprehensive resource for people who support a common-sense approach to protecting the environment. What is Common-Sense Environmentalism?Common-sense environmentalism recognizes that almost everyone today is an environmentalist. We all want a healthy, green environment for ourselves and our families. What distinguishes common-sense environmentalism from more extreme environmental activism is a commitment to fight real environmental problems rather than imagined ones and a realization that free markets are an ally rather than an enemy of environmental stewardship.Common-sense environmentalists recognize that environmental scares are frequently unsupported by sound science and are often launched to...

Rudyard Griffiths, co-director with Patrick Luciani of The Salon Speakers Series, sent me a copy of Czech President Vaclav Klaus' address delivered at Prague Castle this week. "Future dangers will not come from the same source," said the Czech head of state, speaking at the 60th anniversary of the communist takeover of the former Czechoslovakia. "The ideology will be different. Its essence will nevertheless be identical: an attractive, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice a...

Editor's Note: We have been publishing more material than ever on the subject of climate change, for a very simple reason: The debate is not over as to the cause, the eventual severity, nor the remedies for climate change. The debate never was over, and for the mainstream press to have ever acceded to the notion that debate was over, or to condone marginalizing anyone who continued to debate, is one of the most eggregious examples of media bias in history. One should think that given what is at stake - the reorganization of our entire political and economic systems...

ITHACA — Common Council voted Wednesday to support a federal carbon tax. Council passed a resolution urging state and federal officials to pursue a federal carbon tax rather than emissions trading to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The resolution passed 9-0, with Alderwoman Nancy Schuler, D-4th, abstaining. Schuler said some clauses of the resolution were “really just too emphatic because we really don't know.” “I certainly support the concept but I had trouble with the 25 ‘whereases' as a statement,” she said. Sylvester Johnson, who is a member of the Climate Change Action Group of Central New York and largely wrote...

On May 18, NewsBusters introduced you to Kristen Byrnes, the fabulous fifteen-year-old from Maine who had torn apart many of the myths purported by the Global Warmingist-in-Chief, soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore, in his schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”Now, the Precocious Ponderer from Portland is taking on the scientist that Gore relied on for much of his misinformation, James Hansen of NASA.In her recent report entitled “Houston, We Have a Problem,” Byrnes identified a serious concern with this so-called scientist that many anthropogenic global warming skeptics have been addressing for years (emphasis added throughout): James Hansen seems to have a busy life for someone...

For weather watchers, the name Joe Sobel should be a familiar one, as he has been with AccuWeather for 35 years, and is a regular guest on radio stations as well as MSNBC. With that in mind, Dr. Sobel posted an article at the AccuWeather blog Wednesday highly critical of the naming of sub-tropical storms, most recently Andrea. In his view, this practice – which is only five years old – is exaggerating the number of storms per year thereby adding to global warming alarmism Sobel began (emphasis added throughout): Well ladies and gentlemen, we have our first named storm...

A key element of the second major report on climate change being released Friday in Belgium is a chart that maps out the effects of global warming , most of them bad, with every degree of temperature rise. There's one bright spot: A minimal heat rise means more food production in northern regions of the world. However, the number of species going extinct rises with the heat, as does the number of people who may starve, or face water shortages, or floods, according to the projections in the draft report obtained by The Associated Press Some scientists are calling this...

TORONTO - A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, scientists said. The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 497 miles south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north. Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake. Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. "Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems," said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University...

After more than a dozen hurricanes battered the Atlantic Ocean last year, scientists are wondering what - if anything - might be causing stronger and more frequent storms. Some have pointed to rising ocean temperatures, brought on by global warming. Others say the upswing is simply part of a natural cycle in which hurricanes get worse for a decade or two before dying down again. Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have put forward an intriguing theory that introduces a whole new dimension to the debate. Writing today (Oct. 10, 2006) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists...

Climate change, naturally induced by tiny shifts in Earth's rotational axis and orbit, periodically wipes out species of mammals, a study published on Thursday says. Palaeontologists have long puzzled over fossil records that, remarkably, suggest mammal species tend to last around two and a half million years before becoming extinct. Climate experts and biologists led by Jan van Dam at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, overlaid a picture of species emergence and extinction with changes that occur in Earth's orbit and axis. The Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle: it is slightly elliptical, and the ellipticality itself...

In new ads, ski company says global warming could dry up snow during the next century... The Aspen Skiing Co. hopes potential customers are ready for a snow job. On Wednesday, the company unveiled a new advertising campaign for the 2006-07 season that centers around the message that snow — and skiing — will disappear around 2100 if humans don’t take drastic action to slow global warming. Three full-page ads, which show a melting snowflake imposed over Highland Bowl, will run in SKI and Outside magazines in the next few months. One ad portrays a “certificate of death” for snow....

Sept. 21, 2006 — The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth's oceans has cooled significantly since 2003. The new research suggests that global warming trends are not always steady in their effects on ocean temperatures. [SNIP]Lyman said the recent cooling is not unprecedented. "While global ocean temperatures have generally increased over the past 50 years, there have also been substantial decadal decreases," he said. "Other studies have shown that a similar rapid cooling took place from 1980 to 1983. But overall, the long-term trend is warming."[SNIP]Lyman said the cause of the recent cooling is not...

Where are the Hurricanes? I blame global warming...http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1155133659.shtml Scott Kirwin Aug 9, 2006 Nearly a year ago the country was being slammed by hurricanes. As Americans suffered some claimed that the ferocity of Katrina and Rita was due to global warming. A search of Dean's World shows that this site is one of the few that argued against that idea over the course of 2005. So here we are, a year later. Where are the hurricanes? Where is the fury of Mother Nature? Where are her righteous swirls of rain and wind that shall smite the evil non-Kyoto Protocol signing...

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 11 - Despite the tragic human and economic toll from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast in 2005, the much-discussed "toxic-soup" environmental pollution was nowhere close to being as bad as people thought. That's the bottom-line message from dozens of scientific papers scheduled for presentation at a four-day symposium that opened here today at the American Chemical Society's national meeting, according to symposium organizer Ruth A. Hathaway. Entitled "Recovery From and Prevention of Natural Disasters," it is one of the key themes for the meeting, which runs through Sept. 14. James Lee Witt, former director...

James Lovelock, the author of the "theory known as Gaia, which holds that Earth acts like a living organism, a self-regulating system balanced to allow life to flourish", has a new message for us: never mind, it's too late, Gaia can't handle industrialisation. Earth will be at least 10 degrees hotter in a decade or two. It's irreversible. "We are poached," the Washington Post reports. So we might as well enjoy ourselves. Burn those fossil fuels. Build those McMansions. Eat those cheeseburgers. We're doomed anyway. Or you could recall an earlier doomsayer, Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, who wrote...

Despite recent indications that Antarctica cooled considerably during the 1990s, new research suggests that the world's iciest continent has been getting gradually warmer for the last 150 years, a trend not identifiable in the short meteorological records and masked at the end of the 20th century by large temperature variations. Numerous ice cores collected from five areas allowed scientists to reconstruct a temperature record that shows average Antarctic temperatures have risen about two-tenths of a degree Celsius, or about one-third of a degree Fahrenheit, in 150 years. That might not sound like much, but the overall increase includes a recorded...

... I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible. Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is...

It's hotter than you know what outside, and the sizzling temperatures are the surest sign yet that the theory of global warming is for real, right? Well, no, not exactly, say climate scientists. "We are definitely on the global warming train and it is headed for the horizon," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, in an interview Friday. "But this heat wave that we have been having for the last month or so, that is mostly meteorology." Southern California has been locked in a huge stationary high-pressure system that has been baking the landscape...

ASPEN - If humans do nothing to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, skiing in Aspen will be toast by 2100. And that's probably the least of Aspen's worries, according to a new study on climate change coordinated by The Aspen Global Change Institute and unveiled this week. Drier conditions will make it a challenge for the Roaring Fork Valley to supply its growing population with drinking water as soon as 2030, said the institute's founder, John Katzenberger. Higher temperatures and little change in precipitation will require more irrigation of hay fields and other crops. And the Aspen area won't be...

An expert with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is questioning the connection between climate change and the appearance of more intense hurricanes in recent years. Historical data on hurricanes is too crude to determine long-term trends in intensity, says Christopher Landsea, a science and operations officer with NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. Extreme hurricanes like Katrina were likely as common around the world 30 years ago as they are today, Landsea says. But since satellite imagery was poorer, storm intensities were underreported. Landsea is the lead author of a commentary in today's issue of the...

COLUMBUS , Ohio – The increasing number of pine plantations in the southern United States could contribute to a rise in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, a new study reports. This is important because carbon dioxide is a key greenhouse gas, one that is linked to global warming. Landowners in the South are turning stands of hardwood and natural pine trees into pine plantations because pine is a more lucrative source of lumber. But pine plantations don't retain carbon as well as hardwood or natural pine forests, said Brent Sohngen, a study co-author and an associate professor of agricultural,...

Rehovot, Israel -- July 17, 2006 – A scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science and his colleagues caused a storm in the atmospheric community when they suggested a few years back that tiny airborne particles, known as aerosols, may be one of the main culprits causing climate change – having, on a local scale, an even greater impact than the greenhouse gases effect. Attempts to understand how these particles influence clouds have generated many uncertainties. A new paper by Dr. Ilan Koren of the Weizmann Institute Environmental Studies and Energy Research Department and Dr. Yoram Kauffman of the NASA/Goddard...

To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that island land, which is depicted so ominously in Gore’s movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming. They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and...

EVERYBODY knows Republicans don't care about global warming. But here's some surprising news: Neither do Democrats. That's the finding of a poll out this week from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a survey of more than 1,500 U.S. adults last month. Pew found a huge partisan gap in how Americans perceive whether global warming exists and whether it's caused by humans, with Democrats tending to think it's real and man-made, and Republicans less convinced. Yet, when asked to rate a selection of 19 national issues by importance, that gap looks less significant: Republicans ranked global...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1810738,00.html Climate change can wait. World health can't With $50bn, we could make the planet a better place but money spent on global warming would be wasted Bjorn Lomborg Sunday July 2, 2006 The Observer A city council has a £10m surplus, which it wants to allocate to a good cause. Ten groups clamour for the cash. One wants to buy new computers for an inner-city school. Another hopes to beautify a park. Each puts a persuasive case for the benefits they could achieve. What should the councillors do? The straightforward answer might seem to be to divide the cash...

The Antarctic ozone hole's recovery is running late. According to a new NASA study, the full return of the protective ozone over the South Pole will take nearly 20 years longer than scientists previously expected. Scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., have developed a new tool, a math-based computer model, to better predict when the ozone hole will recover. The Antarctic ozone hole is a massive loss of ozone high in the atmosphere (the stratosphere) that occurs each spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The ozone hole is...

Today's media and tomorrow's will showcase long-faced scholars who dare not let you run out of things to worry about as they herald the onset of a potentially cataclysmic menace called "global warming." And if you haven't heard, you will, this weekend, that our fragile planet is overheating. Congress knew no more about the future than you do, so the congress designated our national academy of sciences to tell them what they should tell us about global warming, and I have seen their report and here it comes. Your planet is hotter than it has been in 400 years. Maybe...

In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Their proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists and mainstream scientists said the focus should be on reducing greenhouse gases and preventing global warming in the first place. But now, in a major reversal, some...