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So here we have them: Obama’s three scientists—Steve Chu, John Holdren, and Jane Lubchenco. All with sterling credentials – a Nobel laureate in physics, a recent president of the AAAS, a recent head of the International Council of Scientific Unions – but with minimal knowledge of climate science, except what they may have gleaned from reading the IPCC summary. Yet all three seem supremely confident that they will drastically change US climate policy. Well, let me be the first with the bad (for them) news: Within a year or so, they are going to be an awfully frustrated bunch. My...

Nature is a self-regulating mechanism that dwarfs any mindless effort to "control" the amount of CO2 produced by coal-fired utilities, steel manufacturers, autos and trucks, and gasoline fueled lawn mowers. Okay, children, let's all sit up straight at our desks. We are going to begin 2009 with a lesson about carbon dioxide (CO2). Why do we need to know about CO2? Because the President-elect, several of his choices for environmental and energy agencies, the Supreme Court and much of the U.S. Congress have no idea what they are talking about and, worse, want to pass legislation and regulations that will...

For years, we've been treated to the now-serially debunked notion that carbon dioxide plays a major causative role in warming the global temperature. Scientist after scientist is coming along to sayno . . . there's not enough carbon dioxide to make a difference; even when concentrations are relatively high, it's still just a trace gas in our atmosphere, and/or carbon dioxide levels follow rather than precede warming, and/or other effects, such as sunspots and solar activity, are far more causative, the point where the effect of carbon dioxide can be considered minimal, at best, etc. So, what do we...

Proponents of human induced warming and climate change told us that an increase in CO2 precedes and causes temperature increases. They were wrong. They told us the late 20th century was the warmest on record. They were wrong. They told us, using the infamous “hockey stick” graph, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) did not exist. They were wrong. They told us global temperatures would increase through 2008 as CO2 increased. They were wrong. They told us Arctic ice would continue to decrease in area through 2008. They were wrong. They told us October 2008 was the second warmest on record....

STRASBOURG (AFP) – The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the EU's climate change package, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, lifting the last hurdle to the ambitious plan. Six texts on the package, already agreed by the 27 European Union member states, were passed by a large majority of the MEPs present. "We have sealed the climate package," said European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering, after the vote. The so-called "20-20-20" climate package, which Europe hopes will serve as a model to other nations, will oblige EU nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent...

A report about why global warming due to carbon dioxide is flawed hypothesis based off of crappy math models. Some of these guys are from the UN's IPCC who left because they so strongly disagreed. Oh, also to give you an idea of how many scientists that is compared to those who think global warming is occurring thanks to carbon dioxide: "The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. " Here's the senate.gov link to where these quotes come from: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6 Here...

The U.N.'s own observations show no warming trend, but things may still get hot and bothered in Poznan. Ten thousand people from 86 countries have descended upon Poznan, Poland, for yet another United Nations meeting on climate change. It’s the annual confab of the nations that signed the original United Nations climate treaty in Rio in 1992. That instrument gave rise to the infamous 1996 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, easily the greatest failure in the history of environmental diplomacy. Al Gore himself descends on Wednesday to personally bless the conclave’s work product — which, based on past history, we...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered both carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of a distant planet, in a key step for finding extraterrestrial life, the space agency said Tuesday. Detecting organic compounds that can be a by-product of life processes on an Earth-like body could one day "provide the first evidence of life beyond our planet," NASA said in a statement. The discovery was made on a Jupiter-size planet 63 light years away from Earth that is too hot for life, and is all gas and liquid. "We're not closer to discovering life on...

Please tell the EPA NO WAY! The EPA has started the process of naming Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant. On second thought, I wonder if it will get rid of “garlic breath” on crowded elevators?

Water vapor is known to be Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change. Andrew Dessler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. With new observations, the scientists confirmed experimentally...

PARIS (AFP) – Scheduled shifts in Earth's orbit should plunge the planet into an enduring Ice Age thousands of years from now but the event will probably be averted because of man-made greenhouse gases, scientists said Wednesday. They cautioned, though, that this news is not an argument in favour of global warming, which is driving imminent and potentially far-reaching damage to the climate system. Earth has experienced long periods of extreme cold over the billions of years of its history. The big freezes are interspersed with "interglacial" periods of relative warmth, of the kind we have experienced since the end...

If you haven’t made up your mind who to vote for in tomorrow’s presidential election, I’m not sure that what I am about to tell you will help — but it just might. Both candidates told the web site sciencedebate2008 that they accept the scientific agreement that greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels are changing the Earth’s climate. And both candidates have said they want to cap emissions produced by the burning of those fossil fuels.But only Barack Obama has said he would regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.President George W. Bush has declined to curb...

CNSNews.com Astronomical Influences Affect Climate More Than CO2, Say Experts Wednesday, September 17, 2008 By Kevin Mooney, Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – Warming and cooling cycles are more directly tied in with astronomical influences than they are with human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, some scientists now say. Recent observations point to a strong link between “solar variability” – or fluctuations in the sun’s radiation – and climate change on Earth, while other research sees the sun as just one of many heavenly bodies affecting global warming in the later half of the 20th century. Contrary to what has been stated in...

Sep 4, 2008 Cloud-seeding ships could combat climate change Cloud seeding on the high seasIt should be possible to counteract the global warming associated with a doubling of carbon dioxide levels by enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans, according to researchers in the US and UK. John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, US, and colleagues say that this can be done using a worldwide fleet of autonomous ships spraying salt water into the air. Clouds are a key component of the Earth’s climate system. They can both heat the planet by trapping...

We are a little late to the party, but it is worth adding a few words now that our favourite amateur contrarian is at it again. As many already know, the Forum on Physics and Society (an un-peer-reviewed newsletter published by the otherwise quite sensible American Physical Society), rather surprisingly published a new paper by Monckton that tries again to show using rigorous arithmetic that IPCC is all wrong and that climate sensitivity is negligible. His latest sally, like his previous attempt, is full of the usual obfuscating sleight of hand, but to save people the time in working it...

Opponents of massive new energy taxes and regulations breathed a small sigh of relief last month when the Lieberman-Warner climate-tax bill went down in flames on the Senate floor. Even 10 Democrats broke from the party line and voted against it, writing that they would have opposed the bill on final passage. Unfortunately, power-mad bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency remain undaunted. The EPA is expected today to release a document that blueprints a dizzying array of greenhouse-gas regulatory programs under dozens of different provisions of the 1970 Clean Air Act. The document, called an “Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,”...

The dangerous rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may be troubling scientists and world leaders but it could prove to be a boon for plants, German researchers said Tuesday. Increasing exposure to carbon dioxide appears to boost crop yields, Hans-Joachim Weigel of the Johann Heinrich von Thuenen Institute for rural areas, forestry and fisheries in the central city of Brunswick told AFP. "Output increased by about 10 percent for barley, beets and wheat" when the plants were subjected to higher levels of carbon dioxide, Weigel said. The Thuenen Institute, which has been monitoring the phenomenon in fields since 1999,...

A judge in Georgia has thrown out an air pollution permit for a new coal-fired power plant because the permit did not set limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Both opponents of coal use and the company that wants to build the plant said it was the first time a court decision had linked carbon dioxide to an air pollution permit. The decision’s broader legal impact was not clear, either for the plant, proposed to be built near Blakely, in Early County, Ga., or for others outside Georgia, but it signaled that builders of coal plants would face continued difficulties in...

Georgia court cites carbon in coal-plant ruling Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:18pm EDT HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Georgia state court on Monday invalidated a permit to build a 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant, citing the developers' failure to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. An environmental group immediately praised the decision, predicting it would lead to reconsideration of many coal-fired power plants under development in the country. The order, from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, reversed an air permit issued earlier this year....

ERDOS: With oil prices at historic highs, China is moving full steam ahead with a controversial process to turn its vast coal reserves into barrels of oil. Known as coal-to-liquid (CTL), the process is reviled by environmentalists who say it causes excessive greenhouse gases. Yet the possibility of obtaining oil from coal and being fuel self-sufficient is enticing to coal-rich countries seeking to secure their energy supply in an age of increased debate about how long the world’s oil reserves can continue to meet demand. The United States, Australia and India are among those countries looking at CTL technology but...

Researchers in Wyoming report development of a low-cost carbon filter that can remove 90 percent of carbon dioxide gas from the smokestacks of electric power plants that burn coal and other fossil fuels. Maciej Radosz and colleagues at Wyoming's Soft Materials Laboratory cite the pressing need for simple, inexpensive new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from smokestack gases. Coal-burning electric power plants are major sources of the greenhouse gas, and control measures may be required in the future. The study describes a new carbon dioxide-capture process, called a Carbon Filter Process, designed to meet the need. It uses a simple,...

Researchers in Wyoming report development of a low-cost carbon filter that can remove 90 percent of carbon dioxide gas from the smokestacks of electric power plants that burn coal and other fossil fuels. Maciej Radosz and colleagues at Wyoming's Soft Materials Laboratory cite the pressing need for simple, inexpensive new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from smokestack gases. Coal-burning electric power plants are major sources of the greenhouse gas, and control measures may be required in the future. The study describes a new carbon dioxide-capture process, called a Carbon Filter Process, designed to meet the need. It uses a simple,...

A FEDERAL judge in Cal ifornia last month or dered the Interior De partment to decide by this Friday whether to list polar bears as a threatened species because of global warming. It's a fine chance for the Bush administration to stand up for common-sense environmentalism and sound science. You see, polar bears are thriving - and will do so under all but the most speculative scenarios of global-warming apocalypse. Any "threatened" listing would be absurd. The case started with a lawsuit filed by Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2005. To settle it, the Fish and Wildlife...

Pending American Crises by: Bethany Stotts, May 08, 2008 Electricity prices increase between 35% and 65%. 1.2 million to 2.3 million American jobs are lost. Household revenues decrease as much as $1,300. No, these are not the effects of an American recession—they are an act of Congress. The Lieberman-Warner bill, also known as America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, proposes an aggressive cap-and-trade scheme for American businesses and will cost the federal government an additional $3.17 billion by 2015. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will also impose an annual mandate of $90 billion on carbon-emitting private...

Topeka — In the biggest legislative showdown this year, the Kansas House failed to override Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' veto of a bill that would authorize two 700-megawatt coal-fired plants. The House voted 80-45 for the bill, which was four votes short of the two-thirds majority needed in the 125-member chamber to override the veto. The vote took more than two hours as legislative leaders, who support the plant, kept the roll open hoping to get enough votes. House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, and a supporter of the project, said of the outcome, "It is a sad day for the state."But...

May 01, 2008, 9:00 a.m. More Carbon Dioxide, PleaseRaising a scientific question. By Roy Spencer There seems to be an unwritten assumption among environmentalists — and among the media — that any influence humans have on nature is, by definition, bad. I even see it in scientific papers written by climate researchers. For instance, if we can measure some minute amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere at the South Pole, well removed from its human source, we are astonished at the far-reaching effects of mankind’s “pollution.� But if nature was left undisturbed, would it be any happier...

he people who want to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) don't understand the biosphere. Carbon and oxygen are two of the most important elements for biological life. 65% of the human body is oxygen and 18.5% is carbon. Plants are carbon structures with the percentage of carbon varying according to the type of plant. The CO2 oxygen cycle is critical to the functioning of the biosphere. Animals exhale CO2 which plants then use to produce the molecules such as sugars and starches that animals use for food. Plants release oxygen into the air which animals inhale and combine with the carbon...

LOS ANGELES — Look out, Al Gore ... People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says you are refusing to face one very "inconvenient truth." On Monday, the animal rights organization launched the campaign offsetalgore.com (conveniently timed for Earth Day) in an attempt to counter the effects that they say the former vice president's meat-laden diet has on Mother Nature. While reps for Gore had no comment, Pop Tarts confirmed with people who have worked with the ex-veep that he loves his steak and sausage, plus he was notorious for chowing down on the almost all-meat Atkins diet during his...

Almost everyone's breasts look good in Hollywood. From Anne Hathaway and Victoria Beckham to Catherine Zeta-Jones, it doesn't matter if you're 20 or 50; when you get on that red carpet in your designer dress, you've got to get it right. C02 TREATMENTSSaid to be the biggest breakthrough since Botox, carboxy therapy can eradicate wrinkles and stretch marks on your de colletage and take years off your skin. It has recently been made available in Britain by Parisian doctor Jules-Jacques Nabet, who says: "Nothing else works like it for loose skin and stretch marks. It means there is no need...

Utility executives in Kansas were shocked last fall when a state environmental official rejected two coal-fired power plants because of the millions of tons of carbon-dioxide emissions they could produce. In a state where coal generates 73 percent of the electricity, the pro-coal forces were unable to work their will. That ineffectiveness will be underscored as early as Friday if Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as expected, vetoes an effort by the Kansas State Legislature to ensure the plants are approved. A handful of lawmakers seeking a new energy policy are blocking the attempt to override. The struggle over those plants is...

WASHINGTON – The amount of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, released by the nation's power plants grew by nearly 3 percent last year, the largest annual increase in nearly a decade, an environmental group said Tuesday. The analysis of government emissions figures covered more than 1,000 plants including those burning coal, natural gas and oil. The report by the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that the 2.9 percent increase in CO2 releases outpaced a 2.3 percent year-to-year increase in electricity production. “Carbon emissions actually increased faster than (electricity) demand,” said Eric Schaeffer, the group's executive director....

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades. Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide. Using advanced computer models to...

MONTEREY, California (AFP) - A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said Thursday he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel. Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially world-changing "fourth-generation fuel" project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California. "We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy," Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page. "We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been notified by one of the nation's largest American Indian tribes that it intends to sue over the agency's lack of action on an air permit application for a proposed coal-fired power plant. The Navajo Nation's Dine Power Authority and Houston-based Sithe Global Power have partnered to build the $3 billion Desert Rock plant, which would be capable of producing electricity for more than 1 million homes across the Southwest. Navajo Deputy Attorney General Harrison Tsosie told The AP on Wednesday that the tribe and Sithe applied for an air permit in May 2004...

Fifty years ago the U.S. Weather Bureau, predecessor of NOAA’s National Weather Service, helped sponsor a young scientist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to begin tracking carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere at two of the planet’s most remote and pristine sites: the South Pole and the summit of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. This week NOAA, Scripps, the World Meteorological Organization, and other organizations will celebrate the half-century anniversary of the global record of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere—often referred to as the “Keeling Curve” in honor of that young scientist, Charles David Keeling. Science, business, and policy...

New Mexico industries will be required to start reporting their greenhouse gas emissions, beginning in 2009, to the state Environment Department, under a rule recently ordered by the state Environment Improvement Board. The rule, which includes oil and gas producers, mandates the most comprehensive reporting in the nation, said Jim Norton, director of the Environmental Protection Division of the Environment Department. Wisconsin and New Jersey have greenhouse gas reporting rules, but they are narrower in scope. California has prepared a similar rule but has not yet adopted it, Norton said. The rule requires industries that already report emissions of other...

Carbon taxes are coming; carbonless fuels are being demanded; carbon dioxide is now viewed as a pollutant. Just how dependent are we on carbon and all the products utilizing carbon for our daily activities? I can only name two items in my entire household that contain zero carbon in their makeup; can you do better?

WASHINGTON - In one week, Southern California's wildfires spewed the same amount of carbon dioxide — the primary global warming gas — as the state's power plants and vehicles did, scientists figure. A new study by two Colorado researchers shows that U.S. wildfires pump a significant amount of the greenhouse gas into the air each year, more than the state of Pennsylvania does. It raises questions about how useful it is to plant trees to offset rising carbon dioxide emissions and soothe environmental consciences. Because the California wildfires occurred just as the study was about to be published, the researchers...

TOPEKA | Delivering a stunning victory to those concerned about global climate change, Kansas’ top regulator rejected a proposal to build a coal plant in western Kansas. The decision puts Kansas squarely in the center of the growing debate over global warming and energy policy, and adds the state to the small but growing list of states where plants have been rejected based on their carbon emissions.

WASHINGTON - Just days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected. Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the...

Further evidence for the decline of the oceans’ historical role as an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide is supplied by new research by environmental scientists from the University of East Anglia. Since the industrial revolution, much of the CO2 we have released into the atmosphere has been taken up by the world’s oceans which act as a strong ‘sink’ for the emissions. This has slowed climate change. Without this uptake, CO2 levels would have risen much faster and the climate would be warming more rapidly. A paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research by Dr Ute Schuster and Professor...

Chalk it up to politics as usual. There's no question the ill-advised decision by Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby to reject an air quality permit needed for Sunflower Electric Power Corp. to add two power plants to its Holcomb facility was a political one -- triggered, no doubt, by dreams of higher office of his boss, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who once told folks here she wouldn't stand in the way of Sunflower's expansion, yet turned on that pledge in opposing the plan amid political debate over global warming. Bremby's ruling was a blow to southwest...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The United States is moving toward the regulation of carbon emissions, a U.S. energy official said Thursday, despite the Bush administration's adherence to a voluntary approach to controlling the primary gas blamed for climate change. "There will be carbon regulation of some sort," said Dan Arvizu, director of the National Renewable Energy Lab of the Department of Energy, told an international conference on biofuels. He spoke a week after briefing President Bush's global warming conference of major carbon-emitting nations. "I am neutral as to which kind of carbon management regulation there will be. It is very clear...

Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong SOMETIMES you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known for a thousand years how to get that ethanol out of the formerly sugary liquid and into a more or less pure form. You heat it up, catch the vapour that emanates, and cool that vapour down until it liquefies. The result burns. And when Henry Ford...

PARIS, Sept. 25 — A group representing some of the world’s leading banks will urge the United States and other industrial nations this week to move quickly to introduce a lightly regulated system for trading carbon emissions permits. Permit-trading systems offer banks a potentially vast new business. For it to grow, leading economies — particularly the United States — will need to set limits on the quantities of greenhouse gases that can be released and to allow companies in other parts of the world to buy emissions permits. “Where politicians opt to implement carbon constraints, then it should be cap-and-trade,”...

LONDON, Sept. 14 (UPI) -- John Marburger, one of U.S. President George Bush's scientific advisers, said climate change is real and was likely caused by humanity. The presidential science adviser said that he was more than 90 percent certain that the current state of climate change was the direct result of greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans, the BBC reported Friday. The Office of Science and Technology Policy director also said that without significant cuts in the output of carbon dioxide worldwide, the Earth may one day become "unlivable." "The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point,...

If you're wondering who's largely to blame for the alleged heating up of the climate you need look no further than Jane Fonda. That's what "Freakanomics" columnists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt suggest in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. "If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?" the authors ask. According to Editor & Publisher, the two cite Fonda's anti-nuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in...

Governments need to scrap subsidies for biofuels, as the current rush to support alternative energy sources will lead to surging food prices and the potential destruction of natural habitats, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will warn on Tuesday. The OECD will say in a report to be discussed by ministers on Tuesday that politicians are rigging the market in favour of an untried technology that will have only limited impact on climate change. “The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits,” say the authors...

The plan to use trees as a way to suck up and store the extra carbon dioxide emitted into Earth's atmosphere to combat global warming isn't such a hot idea, new research indicates. Scientists at Duke University bathed plots of North Carolina pine trees in extra carbon dioxide every day for 10 years and found that while the trees grew more tissue, only the trees that received the most water and nutrients stored enough carbon dioxide to offset the effects of global warming. The Department of Energy-funded project, called the Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) experiment, compared four pine forest...

With the prospect of climate change legislation that could cost American families up to $4,500 per year by 2015, and talk of using technology to sequester carbon through well drilling, which ... could cost up to $7.2 trillion – or 60 times the current costs of drilling (Energy Tribune, June 2007) – it is ever more critical to determine whether we do in fact have a problem with carbon dioxide. Despite the 90 percent certainty that man is behind recent global warming trends, the word “uncertainty” appears 494 times in the recent “Summary for Policymakers,” produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental...