Free Republic

Climate Deceit: Tom Steyer — the left's answer to the Koch brothers — says he has repented his fossil-fuel sins "based on the scientific evidence" to save the planet and the Democrats. And just what evidence would that be? please give this another read. it has been severely cut/edited from its original formBillionaire Steyer, having made a fortune extracting fossil fuel from the earth, confessed his guilt July 14 in Politico. "The more I learned about the energy and climate problems we currently face," he said, "the more I realized I had to change my life." So now he intends...

Earth, I love you. I always have. You and your elemental inhabitants are the most beautiful beings that I have ever seen, met, felt and experienced. You are the most beautiful life experiment in this universe. You are music to my ears and soul. And your green! The sound of the leaves in the wind. The scents. The sunrise and sunset. The moon. The humming of the bees, the rushing of the waves. The infinite moments of sensory ecstasy and blissful encounters with other beings. Discovering woman-identification has been a constant dance of fire and joy. *** Alexis linked to...

MISSOULA, Mont. — President Obama will announce a series of climate change initiatives on Wednesday. The actions, involving a variety of federal agencies, were among the recommendations of the president’s State, Local and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness, a group of 26 officials who have worked since November to develop the proposals. One of the projects involves shoring up the power supply during climate catastrophes, and the Department of Agriculture on Wednesday will award $236.3 million. The United States Geological Survey and other federal agencies will spend $13.1 million to develop advanced three-dimensional mapping data. The new initiatives...

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama here, says he remembers the morning he spotted a well-known colleague at a gathering of climate experts. “I walked over and held out my hand to greet him,” Dr. Christy recalled. “He looked me in the eye and he said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Come on, shake hands with me.’ And he said, ‘No.'  ” Dr. Christy is an outlier on what the vast majority of his colleagues consider to be a matter of consensus: that global warming is both settled science and a dire threat. He...

A man attempting to sail his 36-foot sailboat through the Northwest Passage was rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Saturday after his boat became trapped in Arctic sea ice northeast of Barrow. The Coast Guard cutter Healy broke a 12-mile path through ice to reach the sailboat Altan Girl about 40 miles from Barrow, the Coast Guard said in a news release Sunday. The Healy was diverted from a research mission to respond to the sailboat. The Coast Guard did not release the rescued man’s name, but the Nome Nugget’s June 26 “Dock Walk” column described the Altan Girl...

People who claim to worry about climate change use more electricity than those who do not, a Government study has found. Those who say they are concerned about the prospect of climate change consume more energy than those who say it is “too far into the future to worry about,” the study commissioned by the Department for Energy and Climate Change found. That is in part due to age, as people over 65 are more frugal with electricity but much less concerned about global warming. However, even when pensioners are discounted, there is only a “weak trend” to show that...

People who say they are concerned about climate change use more electricity than those who say the issue is 'too far away to worry about', government-commissioned study finds

Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate SkepticismWhile alarmists try to enshrine climate scientists as pure and unbiased, those familiar with real life science understand a scientist’s opinion should always be challenged- challenged because personal bias taints their interpretations and challenged because a small minority will fudge the data in order to gain peer acceptance, status and funding.Read the NY Times piece Crack Down on Scientific Fraudsters   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/opinion/crack-down-on-scientific-fraudsters.html?_r=1Scientific fraud is found in the field of medical science because results can be quickly checked. In climate science, dooms...

Some climate change proponents are saying the huge amounts of methane gas, stored under the Arctic ice is a potential "ticking time bomb." They claim that we must stop extracting fossil fuels that put more CO2 into our atmosphere or face disaster. Methane is only one of a number of gases called greenhouse gases (GHG) that can absorb and emit infrared radiation, or in other words, this means they can trap and absorb heat. The most abundant GHG is water vapor, followed by carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and CFC's. By measuring atmospheric infrared radiation, climatologists are able to...

A group called Fossil Free UC wants regents to divest the University of California's endowment fund of all fossil fuel holdings. "As one of the leading public institutions in the world, we have the privilege and the responsibility to take action where we can influence change," Fossil Free UC explains on its website. This is the global-warming movement at its most honest. Its goal is not change, which requires sacrifice in a plugged-in age; its goal is to "influence change" -- to wit, wag a finger at others and demand they do something symbolic and politically correct. What better...

Antarctica continues to defy the global warming script, with a report from Meteo France, that June this year was the coldest Antarctic June ever recorded, at the French Antarctic Dumont d’Urville Station. June this year also broke the June daily minimum temperature record, with a new record low of -34.9c (-30.8F).

******************************************************************************* If you are lucky enough to be reading this from the comfort of your blankets, it might be best to stay there, as Brisbane has hit its coldest temperatures in 103 years. Not since July 28 1911 has Brisbane felt this cold, getting down to a brisk 2.6C at 6.41am.At 7am, it inched up to 3.3C.Matt Bass, meteorologist from BOM, said the region was well below our average temperatures.“If it felt cold, that’s because it was, breaking that record is pretty phenomenal for Brisbane,” Bass said.“The average for this time of year is 12C, so Brisbane was about 9C...

Conservatives have a new line on climate change: “It’s real, but it’s nothing to worry about!” Las Vegas is parched. A 14-year drought has left Lake Mead, the local water source, dangerously low. It has dropped 100 feet in the past decade. If it drops 12 more feet, federal water rationing rules will kick in. Some climate scientists predict that will happen in the next year. And most believe the situation will only worsen over time. The view from inside Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, however, is considerably rosier. That’s where scientists, activists, and bloggers have assembled this...

When one thinks of the warming climate, the phrases that pop into mind probably aren't "nausea and vomiting," "sharp, stabbing pain," and "blood in your urine." Yet these awful symptoms could become more prolific in the coming decades, as hotter weather appears to be linked with the risk of growing a kidney stone. This disheartening prognosis comes from doctors at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and elsewhere who've completed a seven-year-long study of 60,433 patients in several major U.S. cities. When the temperature goes up, there's a subsequent spike in the number of people visiting hospitals for stone issues, they...

The climate in Palestine, both today, and at the time of Jesus has two distinct seasons. The wet or rainy season is from the middle of October to the middle of April. The dry or summer season lasts from the middle of June until the middle of September. It is quite dry in these months and rainfall is very unusual. Although the temperature is summer can get very hot, it often does not feel this way. Cool breezes and low humidity are typical, making the summers very pleasant, especially in areas directly on the coast or on the higher slopes...

Readers may recall the contentious discussions that occurred on this thread a couple of weeks back. Both Willis Eschenbach and Dr. Leif Svalgaard were quite combative over the fact that the model data had not been released. But that aside, there is good news. David Archibald writes in to tell us that the model has been released and that we can examine it. Links to the details follow.While this is a very welcome update, from my viewpoint the timing of this could not be worse, given that a number of people including myself are in the middle of the ICCC9...

From FrontiersA team of researchers in the U.S. and Germany has measured the highest level of ultraviolet radiation ever recorded on the Earth’s surface. The extraordinary UV fluxes, observed in the Bolivian Andes only 1,500 miles from the equator, are far above those normally considered to be harmful to both terrestrial and aquatic life. The results are being published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Environmental Science.“These record-setting levels were not measured in Antarctica, where ozone holes have been a recurring problem for decades,” says team leader Nathalie A. Cabrol of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center. “This...

Nine out of ten hospital wards may be at risk of overheating, increasing the dangers for vulnerable patients who are left sweltering in temperatures of more than 26C (78.8F), government advisers have warned. Poor ventilation, thin walls, low ceilings and big windows that can barely be opened are contributing to temperatures far exceeding acceptable levels during hot weather, according to the Committee on Climate Change. One fifth of domestic properties could also already be overheating, with flats especially vulnerable, it finds. The number of people dying prematurely from overheating could triple to 7,000 per year by the 2050s as global...

Author Ed Klein, whose new book Blood Feud chronicles the antagonistic relationship between President Barrack Obama and former first family Bill and Hillary Clinton, claims that Obama has handpicked a successor for the 2016 presidential race. The Washington Times reports: Writing in the New York Post, Mr. Klein said: “Publicly, Obama has remained noncommittal on the 2016 race, but privately he worries that Clinton would undo and undermine many of his policies. There’s also a personal animosity, especially with Bill Clinton, that dates from their tough race six years ago.“Obama has authorized his chief political adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to...

Fish don't have Facebook to help keep tabs on their schoolmates. Like junior high students before the Internet, they have to hang out for a while to become pals. But a research team at Australia's James Cook University found that ocean acidification, caused by the fossil fuel burning that drives climate change, could be robbing some tropical fish of their ability to remember friends. Under normal ocean conditions, juvenile damselfish take about three weeks recognize their other fish in their schools. But under simulated conditions with estimated carbon dioxide levels in the year 2100, damselfish apparently lose that ability to...