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Exotic birds from the other side of the world are migrating to Britain across the Arctic as the Polar ice cap melts. Species from the Pacific Ocean travelling north during the summer are no longer finding their paths blocked by ice. Instead, they can now fly around it and when winter comes head south to the Atlantic and British Isles. The trend has become so marked, that for the first time three Pacific seabirds have been added this year to the birdwatchers' handbook, Birds of Britain: The Complete Checklist. This follows confirmed sightings on these shores of species that are...

BERLIN (AFP) - Sports car manufacturer Ferrari intends to cut its vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half and is working on developing hybrid vehicles, the company president said Saturday. < > But he insisted that any future hybrid Ferrari would still be "fundamentally a Ferrari." < >

The climate change debate is often portrayed as a stark choice between two extremes. Do we try to save the economy or do we try to save the environment? Many in established industries argue vociferously that you need to protect the former to save the latter, or that if we act to protect our environment then we might end up killing the economy. Ross Garnaut, in his much awaited draft report, seeks to turn that argument on its head: Australia has much to lose from even the mildest impacts of climate change. If we want to save our economy, then...

NASA scientist James Hansen, a high-ranking government employee, appeared in a Congressional committee meeting room June 23 to say CEOs of fossil energy companies “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” Their crime: Disagreeing with him. No word on the form of energy he used to travel to the inquisition. Hansen further claimed that federal laws to mandate restrictions on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have been “blocked by special interests, focused on short-term profits.” Um, no. Eleven Congresses -- five Democrat, six Republican -- have declined to limit greenhouse gas emissions since Hansen’s much-celebrated testimony before Colorado...

For years, climate alarmists in the media have loved showing video footage of Greenland glaciers slipping into the ocean in order to evoke feelings of global warming gloom and doom in the citizenry. On Friday, the journal Science is publishing a seventeen year study of Greenland's ice sheet that flatly contradicts all such hysterical reports and claims. In fact, the paper concludes that such melting is a normal summertime event, and that when looked at over a longer period of time, there has been little change in the ice sheets in this region, and even possibly a slowing in glacial...

OTTAWA–Prime Minister Stephen Harper says global efforts to fight climate change are likely to go more smoothly once U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office early next year. Referring to the U.S., he said, "I think, if you don't see a change this year, you're certainly going to see a change on that front next year."

Recent studies have shown that this water, which flows deep into the ice through natural drainpipes called moulins, allows the ice to slide faster over bedrock toward the ocean. And the faster the ice flows, the faster sea levels rise. But a Dutch study using 17 years of satellite measurements in western Greenland suggests that the movement associated with the meltwater is not as rapid as had been feared. The acceleration appears to be a transient summer phenomenon, the researchers said, with the yearly movement actually dropping slightly in some places. “The positive-feedback mechanism between melt rate and ice velocity,”...

Today the Earth is at aphelion, its farthest distance from the Sun during the whole year, and this year the Earth will be at its second farthest aphelion of the century. Not that it will feel much different though. The reason for aphelion is the slightly oval-shaped orbit of the Earth around the Sun, with the Sun slightly off-centre. So at this aphelion the Earth lies about 152 million km (94.5 million miles) away from the Sun, roughly 2.4 million km (1.5 million miles) more than average. That means that the Sun will appear 1.7 per cent smaller in the...

PARIS (AFP) — The head of the UN's Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists on Friday said only seven years remained for stabilising emissions of global-warming gases at a level widely considered safe. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), delivered the bleak warning at a gathering of European Union ministers where he pleaded with the EU to take the lead in global talks on tackling climate change. The UN negotiations "must progress rapidly, otherwise I am afraid that not only future generations but even this generation will treat us as having been irresponsible," said Pachauri. "The...

It all boils down to one simple question: will cows be taxed for burping and farting?The complex debate about the introduction of an emissions trading scheme to tackle climate change is causing panic among farmers. The release of the Garnaut report yesterday only served to increase their fears. Ross Garnaut's report acknowledges the initial difficulties of measuring gas emissions on Australia's 155,000 farms, but says a broad-based scheme should include agriculture at some stage. The only question now is whether it will be included in the initial 2010 version of the scheme or introduced at a later date. Every major...

It somehow seems right for Stephane Dion to hold his Liberal leader's Stampede breakfast at the Calgary zoo. And if the dorky Quebec politician dresses up like a real Alberta cowboy, things will only get more bizarre. More ludicrous. Heck, Stephane even decided to man up for the occasion. He's challenged Prime Minister Stephen Harper to a rootin' tootin' western debate. The slugfest would be over his brilliant Green Shift economic boondoggle, which he claims will not only "make real progress in the fight against the climate change crisis" but also "make our economy more competitive. "We need leadership that...

Much noise has been made about how water lubricates the base of Greenland's ice sheet, accelerating its slide into the oceans. In a rare "good news" announcement, climatologists now say the ice may not be in such a hurry to throw itself into the water after all. Mother Nature, it seems, has given it brakes. Since 1991, the western edge of Greenland's ice sheet has actually slowed its ocean-bound progress by 10%, say the team, who have studied the longest available record of ice and water flow in the region. Not all scientists agree. Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space...

Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive. Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

...In 1985, privately owned cars were almost unknown in China. The number of motorized vehicles, however, multiplied 164-fold, from 2,328 in 1950 to 384,451 in 1990. Today, the number of privately owned automobiles in Beijing is approaching 3,000,000....(page 253 of the report)

EU ministers grapple with global warming goal French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, chairing the first top-level meeting under France's six-month presidency of the EU, was to ask his counterparts to identify two key areas of national concern to help spur the negotiation process. PARIS - EUROPEAN UNION (EU) environment ministers began an informal two-day meeting here on Thursday aimed at clearing some of the many obstacles besetting their goal of slashing carbon emissions by 2020. French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, chairing the first top-level meeting under France's six-month presidency of the EU, was to ask his counterparts to identify two...

Australian astronomers may have found a solution to how far-away Jupiter and Saturn drive the sun's solar cycle. In a paper published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, astronomer Dr Ian Wilson and colleagues from the University of Southern Queensland, suggest Jupiter and Saturn affect the sun's movement and its rotation, and hence its sunspot activity. Every 11 years the sun undergoes a period of intense solar activity, marked by flares, coronal mass ejections and sunspots. This period is known as the solar maximum and occurs twice each solar, or Hale, cycle. "The sun can be thought...

Barack Obama's speechwriters continue their sales job, today giving BHO a speech to read about public service. And, on his site you can find a "Plan for Universal Voluntary Public Service" (barackobama.com/issues/service), where he informs us that "this will be a cause of my presidency". I can hardly wait! Further: Obama will expand AmeriCorps from 75,000 slots today to 250,000 and he will focus this expansion on addressing the great challenges facing the nation. He will establish a Classroom Corps to help teachers and students, with a priority placed on underserved schools; a Health Corps to improve public health outreach;...

Due to pending disasters predicted because of global warming, government scientists are urging the creation of a new Earth Systems Science Agency -- by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey... 'The United States faces unprecedented environmental and economic challenges in the decades ahead,' the group warns. 'Foremost among them will be climate change, sea-level rise, altered weather patterns, declines in freshwater availability and quality and loss of biodiversity'... Developing...

A gas used in the making of flat screen televisions, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), is being blamed for damaging the atmosphere and accelerating global warming. Almost half of the televisions sold around the globe so far this year have been plasma or LCD TVs. But this boom could be coming at a huge environmental cost. The gas, widely used in the manufacture of flat screen TVs, is estimated to be 17,000 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. Ironically, NF3 is not covered by the Kyoto protocol as it was only produced in tiny amounts when the treaty was signed in 1997....

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came up with the world's first idea for government control of the temperature of the earth's atmosphere. The presidential candidates from the two major parties in the US seem united in their quest to increase the role of the federal government in regulating climate. European nations have spearheaded international efforts. Politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists around the globe are in determined agreement on climate change. They want to do something about it. US citizens currently face is a lack of choice from the two presidential candidates. During the latter part of the 20th...

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...

There has been a lot of hype this year citing data which is suggesting that we’ll be able to navigate the Northwest Passage and some even so bold as to suggest a completely ice free Arctic Sea. You could say: “A picture is always worth 1000 data points.” I’d say “impassable” fits this picture pretty well: [Click link for photo - I don't know how to post it]

WITH understandable reluctance, Prime Minister John Howard recently donned the political hair-shirt of a carbon trading system. On the same day, NASA chief Michael Griffin commented in a US radio interview that "I am not sure that it is fair to say that (global warming) is a problem that we must wrestle with".

After his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2000, Internet Al Gore pegged his net worth at about $1 million. Today, it's at least $100 million thanks to his global-warming rantings grounded in a consensus of warmists masquer- ading as scientists who are unable to prove a word of it. But even as he and his acolytes fret about runaway warming and rail against Big Oil's "obscene profits," they refuse to admit the earth has cooled by 1 F since 1998. They also don't see oil companies are doing so well because the likes of Al Gore are choking off fossil-fuel supplies...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Giving one million dairy cows a growth hormone makes them produce more milk would cut greenhouse gas emissions equal to taking 400,000 cars off the road, a US study found. Large scale cow milk production requires the use of huge amounts of land, water and feed resources, noted Judith Capper, a researcher at Cornell University in New York. But using rbST -- the first biotech product used on US farms which has been in farm use for about 15 years -- can help reduce the "carbon hoofprint" while still meeting dairy demand, she explained. Known as either...

FORGET Iraq. The politics of petrol will dominate the coming presidential election in the US. As much as one hates to upset the lofty foreign policy sensibilities of the Left, you need only set foot in the US for a nanosecond to see that the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain are consumed by grassroots concerns over the rising cost of fuel. Just as in Australia, it is clear that the hip pocket nerve of working families may haunt the next US president, confounding efforts to address climate change. And the advocates of climate change are largely to blame....

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research today released a scientific assessment that provides the first comprehensive analysis of observed and projected changes in weather and climate extremes in North America and U.S. territories. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change previously evaluated extreme weather and climate events on a global basis in this same context. However, there has not been a specific assessment across North America prior to this report. Among the major findings reported in this assessment are that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to become more commonplace...

A research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has uncovered evidence of explosive volcanic eruptions deep beneath the ice-covered surface of the Arctic Ocean. Such violent eruptions of splintered, fragmented rock--known as pyroclastic deposits -- were not thought possible at great ocean depths because of the intense weight and pressure of water and because of the composition of seafloor magma and rock.

We live in an invisible atmospheric sea of water vapor, Earth's primary greenhouse gas. Our atmosphere could hold much more water vapor than it does, which would then lead to a much warmer Earth -- but it doesn't. So, why is the greenhouse effect limited to its current value? We don't know; scientists simply "assume" that it magically stays that way. Current computerized climate models that predict large amounts of global warming only do so after making very crude assumptions about why the Earth's natural greenhouse effect is limited to its present average value. In the following article I will...

The ice between Canada and southwestern Greenland has reached its highest level in 15 years. Minus 30 degrees Celsius. That's how cold it's been in large parts of western Greenland where the population has been bundling up in hats and scarves. At the same time, Denmark's Meteorological Institute states that the ice between Canada and southwest Greenland right now has reached its greatest extent in 15 years. 'Satellite pictures show that the ice expansion has extended farther south this year. In fact, it's a bit past the Nuuk area. We have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion...

In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former vice president’s home energy use surged more than 10 percent, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.” In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh)...

The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble, scientists now say. Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper. A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans. "Now we're seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world,"...

Click on the link for the YouTube video. Here's why the Democrats in Congress don't want the price of oil to come down. They don't want you to use gas or get electricity from coal. They would literally like to shut down the economy.

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....

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in. What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence"). AP The New True Believers But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as...

European Union lawmakers agreed to cap airline emissions blamed for climate change as of 2012, EU officials said, ending an internal deadlock over draft legislation that the U.S. opposes and may cost the industry billions of dollars. The accord by European Parliament and government negotiators adds EU and foreign airlines in January 2012 to Europe's emissions-trading system, which imposes carbon-dioxide quotas on businesses and requires those exceeding their limits to buy permits from companies that emit less. The plan covers flights to and from the 27-nation EU's airports, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because national governments...

Scientists say the jury is still out on whether rising sea temperatures will cause more hurricanes to hit U.S. coastlines. Yet some insurance companies are boosting premiums based on assumptions that they will... Costs for homeowner insurance along the East and Gulf coasts have risen 20% to 100% since 2004, says the Insurance Information Institute... In the three years through 2006, says the institute, property and casualty insurers registered record profits, topping out at $65.8 billion in 2006... Helping to drive these developments is a little-known tool of the insurance world: Computerized catastrophe modeling. Crafted by several independent firms and...

Climate Change: While the media scream that man-made global warming is making the North Pole ice-free, another possible cause is as old as the Earth itself. They just have to look deeper.To the delight of Al Gore and the rest of the Gaia groupies, scientists at the National Snow & Ice Data Center in Colorado are predicting that the North Pole will be completely free of ice this summer. The apocalyptic headlines already are starting to appear. "From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important," says the...

Where are the Sunspots? Are we in for a Quiet Solar Cycle?Written by Ian O'Neill So what's up with our Sun? Is it going through a depression? It seems as if our closest star is experiencing a surprisingly uneventful couple of years. Solar minimum has supposedly passed and we should be seeing a lot more magnetic activity, and we certainly should be observing lots more sunspots. Space weather forecasts have been putting Solar Cycle 24 as a historically active cycle… but so far, nothing. So what's the problem? Is it a ticking bomb, waiting to shock us with a huge...

AUSTIN, Texas—A class of powerful, invisible waves hidden beneath the surface of the ocean can shape the underwater edges of continents and contribute to ocean mixing and climate, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have found. The scientists simulated ocean conditions in a laboratory aquarium and found that "internal waves" generate intense currents when traveling at the same angle as that of the continental slope. The continental slope is the region where the relatively shallow continental shelf slants down to meet the deep ocean floor. They suspect that these intense currents, called boundary flows, lift sediments as the...

Over the past few days, a plethora of articles have been published saying that Arctic ice is melting at a faster rate than last year, which was a recent historical record, and the North Pole will soon be ice free. The graphic below and link to this thread show the opposite: Compare (Arctic) Daily Sea IceAssociated web page:The Cryosphere Today As for the North Pole being ice free, there are openings in the sea ice that don't mean the entire surrounding area is free of ice:The Top of the World: Is the North Pole Turning to Water?

The useful conclusions from this have nothing to do with the correctness of this paper’s data, reasoning, or conclusions. (1) Anthropological global warming (AGW, caused by us) is more difficult to prove than global warming The data showed clear indications of global warming in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hence the difficulty of demonstrating AGW as a substantial driver of current warming, since the natural warming trend was established before massive global industrialization. Proving causation requires more than showing a trend, since the trend was already there. This is a repeated fallacy of general media articles about global...

White House Blocks EPA Emissions Draft Document Outlines Keys To Regulating Greenhouse Gases By IAN TALLEY and SIOBHAN HUGHES June 30, 2008 WASHINGTON -- The White House is trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from publishing a document that could become the legal roadmap for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., said people close to the matter. The fight over the document is the latest development in a long-running conflict between the EPA and the White House over climate-change policy. It will likely intensify ongoing Congressional investigations into the Bush administration's involvement in the agency's policymaking. The draft document,...

Every attempt so far to get emissions under control turns out to be about money. Let's examine an important question. Are the major schemes created by global politicians to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, ostensibly to combat global warming, effective? The answer is no, because they aren't about addressing global warming. They're about making more money for governments and large corporations. Let's start with the Kyoto accord. Will it be effective in lowering global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? No. It wasn't meant to be. Kyoto, a United Nations treaty, exempts the developing world -- 143 of 180 nations which ratified it...

PARIS (AFP) — Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday...

A new paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia has a warning to global warming believers not immediately obvious from the summary: Based on our claim that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in the Sun’s orbital motion about the barycentre, we propose that the mean period for the Sun’s meridional flow is set by a Synodic resonance between the flow period (~22.3 yr), the overall 178.7-yr repetition period for the solar orbital motion, and the 19.86-yr synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn. Or as one of the authors, Ian Wilson, kindly explained to...

Lawmakers from G8 rich countries and five emerging economies including China agreed on Sunday that developed countries should pledge to cut CO2 emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020. They said developed countries should commit to reducing by at least 60-80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and called on poorer countries to do their bit by taking "appropriate" national actions, in a framework being negotiated to fight global warming after 2012. The proposal will be passed to G8 summit host Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

It's almost a point of pride with climatologists. Whenever someplace is hit with a heat wave, drought, killer storm or other extreme weather, scientists trip over themselves to absolve global warming. No particular weather event, goes the mantra, can be blamed on something so general. Extreme weather occurred before humans began loading up the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. So this storm or that heat wave could be the result of the same natural forces that prevailed 100 years ago—random movements of air masses, unlucky confluences of high- and low-pressure systems—rather than global warming.

Some facts you're not likely to hear about from the mainstream media. By Joe D’Aleo. The Antarctic set a new record (since records began in 1979) for sea ice extent at the end of last winter. It stayed well above the normal through the summer with icemelt 40% below the normal. As a new height of irony and hype, the media made a big deal about a fracture of a small part of the Wilkins ice sheet in late February (160 square miles of the 6 million square mile Antarctic ice sheet (0.0027% of the total). Media headlines blared: Bye-bye,...

http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=6950 Will Earth's Future Be a FROZEN One? 27-Jun-2008 ...rather than a hot one? - The future? The disappearance of sun spots was the hot topic at a recent international solar conference held at Montana State University. For the past two years, the sun has undergone a phase of relative inactivity, meaning usual solar phenomena such as sun flares, sun spots, and solar eruptions have all but disappeared. "It's a dead face," researcher Saku Tsuneta says of the solar surface. Tsuneta is with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and was one of the participants at the MSU conference The...