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Two more very cold arctic blasts are going to hit Michigan this week. Conditions may be right late in the week for rapid ice making on the Great Lakes. This makes me think we could make a run at record ice cover on the Great Lakes by this coming weekend. As of Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015, the total Great Lakes ice cover was 84.4 percent. Record total ice cover on the Great Lakes is 94.7 percent, set in 1979.

The United Nation’s climate chief says that reordering the global economy to fight climate change is the “most difficult” task the international body has ever undertaken. “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history,” Christiana Figueres, who heads up the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that...

Al Gore, Al Jazeera to Fight Over $65 Million in Court February 6, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield 0 Comments  Print This Post It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys. Al Gore used his contacts to get a sweetheart deal for a lefty news network no one wanted that he then sold out to the state sponsor of ISIS, Qatar’s Al Jazeera, which then used it to get even less viewers. Then Qatar screwed Al Gore. And Al Gore is suing Al Jazeera. If only they would agree to end this with an ankle-biting contest. A trial will be...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Try this one from yesterday's stack. I don't know if you people know this or not, but Al Gore has been out at the Sundance Film Festival out there in Park City, Utah. This is one of Robert Redford's big do's, and apparently Al Gore is working on a movie that -- what is the name of this movie? Oh, that's right, "An Inconvenient Truth," and the movie will document his efforts to raise alarm on the effects of global warming, and so he brought Tipper and the kids out there. He's attending parties and posing for...

The $US90 trillion cities proposal came from former vice president Al Gore and former president of Mexico Felipe Calderon, and their colleagues on the The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. That group hopes to persuade the world’s leaders to do something about humanity’s suicidal effort to heat the Earth’s climate. Part of fighting climate change will mean redesigning, or building anew, towns and cities without cars, Calderon says.

Bill de Blasio on Blizzard Bust: ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’ By Jillian Jorgensen | 01/27/15 8:29am After a much-hyped blizzard-that-wasn’t, Mayor Bill de Blasio said this morning that he was glad the city had prepared for a worse storm and that New York would be getting back to normal quickly. “We thought we were going to get something much bigger,” Mr. de Blasio told CNN “New Day” anchor Chris Cuomo (who happens to be the brother of Gov. Andrew Cuomo). Forecasts of two or even three feet of snow led Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo to essentially shut the...

Here's one way to solve global warming: Spend $90 trillion (£59 trillion) over the next few years to redesign all the cities — as in all the cities on earth — so people live in more densely packed neighborhoods and don't need cars.

An MIT professor of meteorology is dismissing global-warming alarmists as a discredited “cult” whose members are becoming more hysterical as emerging evidence continues to contradict their beliefs. During an appearance on this writer’s radio show Monday, MIT Professor emeritus Richard Lindzen discussed the religious nature of the movement. “As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical. I think that’s what’s happening here. Think about it,” he said. “You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re...

Al Gore and Pharrell Williams took to the stage at the Davos Economic Forum on Wednesday to announce the second iteration of Live Earth, a series of worldwide concerts to raise awareness of climate change. Gore and Williams were joined by Live Earth co-founder Kevin Wall to announce the concerts, which will take place across all seven continents on June 18, according to the Guardian. The event hopes to capture a global television audience of 2 billion across 193 television networks. Williams, who performed at the first round of Live Earth concerts in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, will reportedly...

British-Lebanese human rights lawyer urges Egyptian president to expedite release of Canadian-Egyptian reporter.British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has called on Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to release and pardon an imprisoned Egyptian-Canadian journalist for Al Jazeera, whom she represents. The attorney - who recently wed Hollywood star George Clooney - released a statement Friday, expressing disappointment over the lack of "concrete" progress toward the release of Mohamed Fahmy following a meeting with Egyptian and Canadian diplomats, Egypt's Al-Masry Al-Youm reported. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird expressed cautious optimism for Fahmy's release after talks with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shukri...

In an article provide from the archives of the Chicago Tribune we see a cautionary tale with  happy ending. The article written by Michael Smith in January of 1969 quotes Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, then chairman of the Atomic Energy commission: “For 21st century Chicago,” Smith wrote in summary of Seaborg in 1969, “the price could be the creation of a city in which the sun never shines because it cannot penetrate the tons of airborne pollutants and a city where rainfall strikes terror because it drenches everything with destructive and deadly acids.”Growing up in Chicago the sun often never...

MUMBAI: Two of three scientists at a session on climate change and society at the Indian Science Congress on Tuesday felt fears of man-made global warming were greatly exaggerated. Their presence at the conference was particularly significant in light of the current 'development-versus-envir- onment' debates. "While I agree that glaciers are melting because of global warming, if this is because of man, then what was the reason for the melting of the glaciers in the Gondwana period long before man arrived on the planet?" asked Dhruv Sen Singh, Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, University of Lucknow. "Climate change is...

Time to stop remarking about how unearthly cold it is outside because on Thursday, Mars was actually warmer than many parts of the U.S. The daytime high in the red planet's Gale Crater, as recorded by NASA's curiosity Rover, was 17.6 degrees F - a whopping 11 degrees warmer than the 6-degree high in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Temperatures in fourteen states from Washington to Maine reported temperatures colder than Mars, as a brutal blast of Arctic air sweeps the country.

Despite dire predictions that the North Pole would be ice-free in the near future, Arctic Sea ice levels have been more stable than scientists predicted.  So far this winter, Arctic Sea ice levels are above where they were at the same time last winter and are well within the the standard deviation of the 1981 to 2010 variation, according to daily sea ice data.Europe’s CryoSat-2 satellite found that sea-ice volumes for the fall of 2014 were above the average extent for the last five years. Sea-ice levels were up sharply from 2011 and 2012, according to the satellite– only slightly...

glaringly missing from the summary was mention of $15 million in fees paid by Burkle's Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund since 2002

High-profile Republicans converged this year around a new favorite refrain when it comes to climate change: “I’m not a scientist.” Party leaders and candidates for office repeated variations of the theme throughout the year when asked whether manmade climate change is happening and what should be done about it. “What I have said repeatedly is I’m not a scientist,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) told a Kentucky sports radio show. “I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change,” Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) said of the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants. “I’d leave it to the...

Former Vice President Al Gore showed up at the United Nations climate summit in Lima, Peru Wednesday to show creative support for an international global warming treaty. Gore quoted poets from three different languages, according to the news site Responding to Climate Change. Apparently, Gore quoted poetry from China, Spain and the United States — likely because China, Europe and the U.S. are the world’s top emitters of carbon dioxide emissions.

~snip~ The former U. S. Vice President arrived early, but did not start speaking until 1:30. That may be because there weren’t many people in the very large room. By the time he began to speak, perhaps half the seats were occupied. More people came as he continued talking. At the end, he got a polite round of applause. Such are the indignities of being a former movie star. Gore’s talk was an update of the slide-show immortalized in the sci-fi classic, “An Inconvenient Truth.” But not an update that replaces its numerous false and misleading claims. For instance, Gore’s...

Was It Too Soon to Be Sustainable? Warren, Vt. — Dotty Kyle and Eric Brattstrom had an ambitious vision for the home they would build when they sold their bed-and-breakfast here seven years ago and retired. They were environmental and community advocates, so they wanted it to be as sustainable as possible — ideally net-zero, producing as much energy as it used. And because they would be living on a modest fixed income, they needed to make sure it was inexpensive to maintain. But they didn’t want to scrimp on luxury or size, so against their architect’s advice they insisted...

The world is locked into 1.5°C global warming, posing severe risks to lives and livelihoods around the world, according to a new climate report commissioned by the World Bank. The report, which called on a large body of scientific evidence, found that global warming of close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times – up from 0.8°C today – is already locked into Earth's atmospheric system by past and predicted greenhouse gas emissions. Such an increase could have potentially catastrophic consequences for mankind, causing the global sea level to rise more than 30 centimeters by 2100, droughts to become more severe and...