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Tropical depression perhaps turning into storm in southern east coast, looks likely to veer out to sea. September forecast. Dry from Texas to New England in September. Cool in west prairie states. PDO and AMO influence on weather systems long term (long rant).

The unbearable sadness of climate activism: Nicole Thornton remembers the exact moment her curious case of depression became too real to ignore. It was five years ago and the environmental scientist – a trained biologist and ecologist – was writing a rather dry PhD on responsible household water use. Fair enough. That would make anyone depressed. Thornton had always been easily upset by apathy towards, and denial of, environmental issues. But now she began to notice an oddly powerful personal reaction to "the small stuff" – like people littering, or neighbours chopping down an old tree. So, she's a bossy...

Bay Area billionaire Tom Steyer's blitz against candidates who are soft on climate change is underway in seven states, but some prominent fact-checking groups say he's emitting enough hot air to melt a few glaciers. Negative reviews from watchdogs like PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and the Washington Post are dogging one of the nation's biggest political donors, a former hedge fund manager who ditched his ties to fossil fuels and presented himself as a transparent antidote to the conservative Koch brothers' semi-clandestine funding network.

Researchers have carried out the biggest ever comparative study of stone tools dating to between 130,000 and 75,000 years ago found in the region between sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia. They have discovered there are marked differences in the way stone tools were made, reflecting a diversity of cultural traditions. The study has also identified at least four distinct populations, each relatively isolated from each other with their own different cultural characteristics. The research paper also suggests that early populations took advantage of rivers and lakes that criss-crossed the Saharan desert. A climate model coupled with data about these ancient water...

Among the most exciting of the new acquisitions are the materials from the site of Jebel Sahaba, now in northern Sudan, which were donated to the Museum by Dr Fred Wendorf in 2002. Excavating here in 1965–66, as part of the UNESCO-funded campaign to salvage sites destined to be flooded by the construction of the Aswan High Dam, Dr Wendorf found a cemetery (site 117) containing at least 61 individuals dating back to about 13,000 years ago. This discovery was of great significance for two reasons. First, as a designated graveyard, evidently used over several generations, it is one of...

Carson and his colleagues wanted to explore the question of whether early Amazonians had a major impact on the forest. They focused on the Amazon of northeastern Bolivia, where they had sediment cores from two lakes nearby major earthworks sites. These sediment cores hold ancient pollen grains and charcoal from long-ago fires, and can hint at the climate and ecosystem that existed when the sediment was laid down as far back as 6,000 years ago. An examination of the two cores — one from the large lake, Laguna Oricore, and one from the smaller lake, Laguna Granja — revealed a...

"Previous spatial analysis of the regional topography has shown there are major watersheds that are dry today but which would drain north from these [the Ahaggar and Tibesti ranges in the south] mountains towards the Mediterranean," says Coulthard, et. al. "Satellite imagery reveals traces of major river channels linked to these watersheds, now partially buried under sand dune deposits." It "provides the first strong quantitative evidence for the presence of three major river systems flowing across the Sahara during MIS 5e [Marine Isotope Stage 5e, or 130,000 years ago]".* "Whilst we cannot state for certain that humans migrated alongside these...

Four giant stone hand axes were recovered from the the dry basin of Lake Makgadikgadi in the Kalahari Desert. Oxford University researchers have unearthed new evidence from the lake basin in Botswana that suggests that the region was once much drier and wetter than it is today. They have documented thousands of stone tools on the lake bed, which sheds new light on how humans in Africa adapted to several substantial climate change events during the period that coincided with the last Ice Age in Europe. Researchers from the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford...

LAHORE: The vast Amazon rainforest is on the verge of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world’s climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year. Geoffrey Lean and Fred Pearce, writing for The Independent on Sunday, quote studies conducted by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre in Amazonia as concluding that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down. “Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences,...

he paleontologists were driving across the scorched and trackless Ténéré Desert of Niger, following a low ridge of rock bearing dinosaur fossils. Suddenly, someone on the team, led by Dr. Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, spotted something dark against the tawny dunes.Getting out of their vehicles, they stepped into sand littered with the fossilized bones of modern crocodiles, hippos, camels and birds — interesting creatures, to be sure, but not exactly the quarry of these paleontologists. "But then things got really strange," recalls Gabrielle Lyon, a member of the expedition who is Dr. Sereno's wife and the director...

Extraterrestrials are conveniently global warming believers Only Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson who rose to Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Elliott Trudeau, would tell you that not only do extraterrestrials exist, but they are getting ticked off with those earthlings who don’t buy into Al Gore,/Maurice Strong man-mad global warming. And only Russian Television would be the first to break the ‘scoop’. It’s not enough that earthbound worries like the far left jumping into bed with the expanding Islamic State-Caliphate; that Marxism is on the march in the U.S.A.; or that the...

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer attempted to explain why there is still a sizable portion of Americans that do not buy in to global warming alarmism by, basically, generalizing virtually all of America as not “super sophisticated.”Speaking at a climate conference hosted by the American Renewable Energy Institute, Steyer said: “I think if you were to go around to most of the — what I would think of as super-sophisticated people who think about politics and policy more than five minutes a month — we are doing really well.” … “And the question in the United States of America is...

A long report. A more active hurricane period. Warm water in the Gulf of Mexico may attract hurricanes. Late starting El Nino. Relationship of temperature of Pacific to multivariate ENSO index. (Bob Tisdale update here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/12/the-201415-el-nino-part-15-august-2014-update-an-el-nino-mulligan/) 1-15 days out same pattern that has held most of the summer with cool upper Midwest. Texas getting warmer. While California will get some rain this winter, it won't make up for the shortfall, and the Pacific is cooling again, which means more drought ahead. Sea ice swinging toward "normal" in the north, and heading toward overall record in the south.

US Secretary of State John Kerry continues to baffle observers by insisting that "global warming is, by far, the greatest threat mankind faces in the 21st century." "The reason should be obvious from the term 'global' warming," Kerry said. "This means that it affects everyone. This has to put it ahead of dangers that afflict necessarily narrower categories of victims. The beheading of innocent children by ISIS in Iraq, for example, only affects thousands of people." "The threat to wipe Israel off the map and exterminate the Jews, at worst, would entail the deaths of only a few million," Kerry...

Many scientists and non-scientists are discussing "Global Warming" (or as it is increasingly being called "Anthropogenic Climate Change" or ACC). ACC would simply be an interesting topic for discussion if it were not for the politicization, polarization, and sensationalism that have accompanied the science.

It's really been a more or less normal summer for New York, hysteria notwithstanding, and summer isn't over for another three weeks, meteorologically speaking. Hawaii did not get hit with any hurricanes; one went north, the other disintegrated. Everything else is pretty much well following the forecast.

<p>Death Valley, Calif., which is known for being the world’s hottest location, maxed out at a relatively chilly 89 degrees on Sunday. This temperature – nearly 30 degrees below average – was its coolest high temperature on record for the date by a whopping 15 degrees. The previous record of 104 was set in 1945.</p>

In a desperate effort to keep the global warming hoax alive even though it is now called “climate change”, the meteorologically challenged print and broadcast media is now declaring all weather “extreme” these days.

The billionaire is ready to take out Florida’s multi-millionaire governor. In a nationwide push to fight Republicans who deny the existence of man-made climate change, investor-turned-activist Tom Steyer has founded a Florida political committee, seeded it with $750,000 of his own money and says he’ll spend far more to help Democrat Charlie Crist defeat Gov. Rick Scott. Florida Democrats are buzzing about Steyer spending $10 million, which he won’t discuss. Republicans say the California Democrat is a phony environmentalist, but they nevertheless worry his financial commitment could be real in Florida. “It’s hard to look at the map of the...

Thorough forecast for August.