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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...

In the '80s, rock musician Joe Jackson published a song called "Everything Gives You Cancer." Recent assertions by England's Green Party parliamentary candidate Chris Goodall suggest that sometime soon, someone - maybe Al Gore sycophant Sheryl Crow - is going to write a hit song called "Everything Causes Global Warming."As reported by the Times Online Saturday in a piece hysterically titled "Walking to the Shops ‘Damages Planet More Than Going By Car'" (grateful h/ts to all NBers and readers who forwarded this article for consideration, emphasis added throughout): Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist...

Push for renewable energy in state seen as high risk, high reward In the week since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would do everything he could to block three proposed coal-fired power plants in Nevada, this much can be said: He probably can carry off his threat, especially since they would be constructed on federal land. Just look at how he has stalled a waste repository at Yucca Mountain, where so much more is at stake for the nuclear power industry, which is clamoring for a place to bury radioactive fuel rods. Environmentalists are embracing Reid's bold pronouncement,...

Gov. Bill Richardson weighed in Friday on the Desert Rock power plant planned for the Four Corners, saying he is "gravely concerned" about the plant's effects on the environment. He said the plant would dirty the air and use scarce water and is "a step in the wrong direction." Desert Rock is a coal-powered plant planned for a piece of the Navajo reservation southwest of Farmington. It would produce power for growing Southwestern populations, specifically the Phoenix and Las Vegas, Nev., areas. The plant has been welcomed by Navajo Nation officials, both for the jobs it would bring to the...

WASHINGTON, July 6 — A powerful House Democrat said on Friday that he planned to propose a steep new “carbon tax” that would raise the cost of burning oil, gas and coal, in a move that could shake up the political debate on global warming. The proposal came from Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and it runs directly counter to the view of most Democrats that any tax on energy would be a politically disastrous approach to slowing global warming. But Mr. Dingell, in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- The future of coal as fuel for generating electricity in Florida is "not looking good," Gov. Charlie Crist said Tuesday after the second setback in a month for utilities seeking to build new coal-fired plants. A group that was planning to build a new coal plant in Taylor County, just southeast of Tallahassee, said Tuesday it was suspending its efforts to get a permit in the face of "growing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions." The decision, hailed by Crist as good for Florida, comes about a month after the state's Public Service Commission rejected another coal...

In the matter of "greenhouse gases," carbon dioxide is, shall we say, the gas du jour. We should surely be up to date and knowledgeable on CO2, which is said to be forming a kind of blanket which prevents the escape of all this global heat to outer space. So can I table the question: How does the carbon dioxide get up there? Carbon dioxide is one-and-a-half times heavier than air. I doubt even Al Gore would try to challenge that. So why doesn't it just lie around at ground level like autumn mist, and, of course, choke us all...

If California wants to achieve its goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent by 2020 to fight global warming, it must find a way to cut down the biggest source of those pollutants: cars, trucks and other motor vehicles. Even though transportation contributes 41 percent of greenhouse gases, our society is too geographically dispersed and mobile to realistically expect that we can dramatically reduce the number of miles we drive, ride and fly. So that means our vehicles need to become far more fuel-efficient. The less gasoline per mile that a car uses, the less heat-trapping carbon dioxide it spews...

If you have tried to reason with a GWF (Global Warming Fanatic), you know it's a waste of time. They believe GW with a passion that has no room for facts and data. Tell them the planet has been warming (slightly) since 1977 because it's on the up side of a solar-driven warming and cooling cycle going back hundreds of thousands of years. Tell them CO2 (carbon dioxide) - not a pollutant but a harmless gas that every oxygen-breathing animal breathes out and plants breathe in to survive - is a tiny fraction of the Earth's atmosphere, man-made CO2 a...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has boosted his environmental profile by signing global warming agreements with states and foreign governments, most recently one this month with the Australian state of Victoria. Schwarzenegger officials say the agreements are intended to force the federal government to take a more stringent approach to tackling global warming. But some critics note the signings have given Schwarzenegger opportunities for photo-ops with foreign leaders, and Democrats have raised concerns that the Republican governor is using the deals to predispose California to a market-based system in which companies can buy their way out of emissions reductions. Each of the...

HOUXINQIU, China — The wind turbines rising 180 feet above this dusty village at the hilly edge of Inner Mongolia could be an environmentalist’s dream: their electricity is clean, sparing the horizon sooty clouds or global warming gases. But the wind-power generators are also part of a growing dispute over a United Nations program that is the centerpiece of international efforts to help developing countries combat global warming. That program, the Clean Development Mechanism, has become a kind of Robin Hood, raising billions of dollars from rich countries and transferring them to poor countries to curb the emission of global...

A gentleman named George Monbiot has accused the leading industrial nations of the world of condemning millions to die. Perhaps, if he were criticizing their unwillingness to take stronger military action against Islamic Fundamentalists, the gentleman would have a point. He isn’t. He instead is accusing these nations of using phony science to deny the inevitable reality of anthropogenic global warming. Monbiot drags forth all the AGW bogeymen. The Ice Caps on Greenland will melt, just like they did in the Middle Ages, when the Vikings settled the vast island and appropriately named it Greenland. The Amazon Rain Forest would...

There's growing scientific evidence that global climate change is linked to the dramatic rise in allergies and asthma in the Western world. Studies have found that a higher level of carbon dioxide turbocharges the growth of plants whose pollen triggers allergies. In 2001 Lewis Ziska planted ragweed -- the main cause of hay fever in the fall -- at urban, suburban and rural sites near Baltimore. The plots had the same seeds and soil and were watered in the same way. Yet the downtown plants soon exploded in size, flowering earlier and producing five times the pollen of rural plants....