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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday delivered a major blow to President Barack Obama by blocking federal regulations to curb carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the centerpiece of his administration's strategy to combat climate change. On a 5-4 vote, the court granted a request made by 27 states and various companies and business groups to block the administration's Clean Power Plan. The move means the regulations will not be in effect while litigation continues over whether their legality.

A U.S. federal court on Thursday rejected a bid by 27 states to block the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of its strategy to combat climate change. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a brief order denying an application seeking to stay the rule while litigation continues.

.........."Everyone by now is familiar with the 'pause' or 'slowdown' in the rate of global warming that has taken place over the past 20 years of so, but few realize is that the observed warming rate has been beneath the model mean expectation for periods extending back to the mid-20th century-60+ years," Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger, climate scientists at the libertarian Cato Institute, write in a working paper released in December. Michaels and Knappenberger compared observed global surface temperature warming rates since 1950 to what was predicted by 108 climate models used by government climate scientists to predict how...

At left, a deformed sample of pure metal; at right, the strong new metal made of magnesium with silicon carbide nanoparticles. Each central micropillar is about 4 micrometers across. Credit: UCLA Scifacturing Laboratory ============================================================================================================= A team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a super-strong yet light structural metal with extremely high specific strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. The new metal is composed of magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles. It could be used to make lighter airplanes, spacecraft, and cars, helping to...

Gov. Jerry Brown, at the conclusion of a speech here Tuesday, was heckled by a group of protesters opposed to carbon offset programs they said could hurt indigenous people. Brown, accompanied by several South American governors at a 19th century mansion in Paris, had finished brief remarks urging further efforts to counteract climate change when protesters started yelling, “No REDD.”

A study led by Princeton University researchers suggests that hotter nights may wield more influence than previously thought over the planet’s atmosphere as global temperatures rise — and could eventually lead to more carbon flooding the atmosphere. The researchers determined that warm nighttime temperatures, specifically in the tropics, lead plants to release more carbon through a process known as respiration. Average nighttime temperatures in tropical regions such as Manaus, Brazil, (above) have risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1959. Further temperature increases risk turning Earth’s land-based carbon-storage capacity, or sink, into a carbon source. CREDIT William Anderegg, Princeton Environmental Institute. From...

On November 30, as the Paris international climate conference was getting underway, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a long-overdue update of Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requirements. Originally established in 2005 and then greatly expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, the RFS mandates increasing use of ethanol, biodiesel and other biofuels in America's cars and trucks. Two things were notable. For the first time, EPA set the overall mandate at levels significantly lower than targets Congress called for in 2007. Second, raising the hackles of the biofuel lobby, the Obama administration omitted the RFS...

Climate skepticism is just bad science: "There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming" At some point in the history of all scientific theories, only a minority of scientists-or even just one-supported them, before evidence accumulated to the point of general acceptance. The Copernican model, germ theory, the vaccination principle, evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and the big bang theory were all once heretical ideas that became consensus science. How did this happen? An answer may be found in what 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell called a 'consilience of inductions." For a theory to be accepted, Whewell...

As representatives from 195 nations gather in Paris to hammer out a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions, a new study finds that the failure to do so could leave the world gasping for breath. Marine plants such as phytoplankton are estimated to produce more than half the Earth’s atmospheric oxygen, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For the study, Sergei Petrovskii, an applied mathematics professor at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, calculated how unrestrained global warming could affect phytoplankton and thus the ocean’s ability to generate breathable air. He ran computer models that...

Along with the OPEC meeting that takes place late this week, the biggest story in the world of energy is the Paris Climate Change Conference (Conference of Parties 21, or COP21) that runs through the end of next week. This conference is put on by the United Nations with the goal of producing a global agreement that will lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Implementation of strategies that will help mitigate potential impacts of climate change are also on the agenda. Decarbonizing our energy systems by encouraging greater usage of alternative energy — a frequent topic of this...

India would reject a deal to combat climate change that includes a pledge for the world to wean itself off fossil fuels this century, a senior official said, underlying the difficulties countries face in agreeing how to slow global warming. Almost 200 nations will meet in the French capital on Nov. 30 to try and seal a deal to prevent the planet from warming more than the 2 degrees Celsius that scientists say is vital if the world is to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change. To keep warming in check, some countries want the Paris agreement to...

A picture from the Lucara Diamond Corporation of the 1,111 carat gem quality, Type IIa diamond ============================================================================================================================================ A 1,111 carat "high quality diamond" has been discovered at a mine in Botswana, said to be the biggest find in more than a century, according to the mine company. The gem, only second in size to the Cullinan diamond which was unearthered in South Africa in 1905, was mined by Lucara Diamond Corp. "The magnificent stone, which originated from the south lobe of Lucara's Karowe Mine, is the world second largest gem quality diamond ever recovered and largest ever to be recovered...

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City will run millions of dollars in political television ads against four state attorneys general who are suing the Obama administration over new regulations on carbon emissions from power plants....

Energy: The resident wants to decarbonize the planet by killing fossil-fuel production and its high-paying jobs. Almost no other nation is following his lead despite the promises that will be made at the Paris climate summit. Last week we learned in a Reuters report that Asia will build 500 coal-burning electric generation plants this year alone. An additional 1,000 are planned in China, India, Japan, Indonesia and other countries. The latest projections are that 40% of the added power generation in Southeast Asia by 2040 will be coal-fired. Does this sound like a continent that's taking the alarm bells of...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Private firms looking to build California's $68 billion high-speed train system have concerns about the state's ability to finance some of the project's cost through an untested 'cap-and-trade' carbon trading levy. The doubts, mentioned in correspondence to the state and reviewed by Reuters through a public records request, are not likely to stall financing for the United States' largest infrastructure project, but indicate a tentativeness among firms to use the money as a stand-alone money-generating tool. The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) expects to raise $500 million per year for the rail line from the cap-and-trade...

A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month. A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science. He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly. He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much...

Recently, it was revealed that Volkswagen had been duping diesel-emissions tests on some of its high-end environmentally friendly cars. People were outraged. The CEO resigned. About the same time, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley told the Alberta Chambers of Commerce that her province had better get its environmental house in order or it would have measures imposed upon it. She also said that Alberta has “bad air.”Really? I challenge that statement. In 2011, Canada’s air was judged to be the third highest quality in the world. In 2006, Environment Canada reported that Red Deer was an unusual hot spot for poor...

A crucial process has been identified to explain the reason why dissolved organic carbon (DOC) levels in the deep oceans are constant despite a continuous supply from the surface ocean. This research has been published today in the journal Nature Geoscience and was conducted by scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and The University of Southampton. Dr Jeff Hawkes, the lead author of this study, from the NOC said: "There has been a long outstanding question about whether hydrothermal vents are a source or sink of organic carbon to the oceans. We have shown that hydrothermal vent fluids contain...

There are so many minor stories that are embarrassing to liberals to blog about this afternoon, it’s hard to choose just one. Should I blog the fact that gutless Hillary Clinton waited for the Pope’s arrival to dump the news that she’s taking the predictable orthodox left-wing position on the Keystone Pipeline? Should I blog about left-wing writers being so stupid that they don’t realize the word “retarded” has a non-slur definition? Or should I blog the fact that America’s been planning the Pope’s visit for months and somehow Obama still couldn’t quite get to the airport on time? When...

Full title: Many global warming studies may be wrong as carbon dating found to be highly unreliable for organic matter over 30,000 years old Radiocarbon dating, which is used to calculate the age of certain organic materials, has been found to be unreliable, and sometimes wildly so - a discovery that could upset previous studies on climate change, scientists from China and Germany said in a new paper. Their recent analysis of sediment from the largest freshwater lake in northeast China showed that its carbon clock stopped ticking as early as 30,000 years ago, or nearly half as long as...