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Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row. The findings come two days before the inauguration of a U.S. president who has called global warming a Chinese plot and vowed to roll back his predecessor’s efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases.

The rains have returned to California, and the six-year drought appears to be largely over. We have heard countless assertions from journalists and politicians, ignorant of the weather history of California and the other western states, that the drought was a result of global warming. In the January edition of Scientific American, there is a well-told story “California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe” by B. Lynn Ingram, a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkley. She notes: “Geologic evidence shows that truly massive floods, caused by rainfall alone, have occurred in California every 100...

President-elect Donald Trump met with a Princeton University physicist and skeptic of man-made global warming who observers believe could be the next White House science czar. Trump met with Dr. Will Happer in New York City Friday. Happer didn’t take any questions entering or leaving Trump Tower last week, so it’s hard to say what the meetings were about. Trump has yet to fill key energy and science roles in his administration. Happer served as the director of the Office of Energy Research at the Energy Department under former President George H.W. Bush. Trump could ask Happer to head the...

CIA director nominee Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) said Thursday that he would rather not wade into the climate change debate during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. “I frankly as a director of CIA would prefer today not to get into the details of climate debate and science. It seems my role is gonna be so different and unique from that. It is gonna be to work alongside warriors keeping Americans safe, and so I stand by the things that I’ve said previously with respect to that issue,” Pompeo said. Sen. Kamal Harris (D-Calif.) asked Pompeo, “CIA...

I call this fake news because it’s not news – media headlines around the world today (New York Times, Washington Post, DailyMail) are trumpeting the release of a final version of a draft report released with (similar fanfare) more than a year ago, announced today by the US Fish & Wildlife Service in the official US government publication, (Federal Register).(Without action on climate change, say goodbye to polar bears”) is exactly the kind of sensationalized nonsense I address in my new detailed science book, (Polar Bears: Outstanding Survivors of Climate Change) (announced (here) and discussed (here)

It’s time to build the wall — around California At a confirmation hearing for President-elect Donald Trump’s CIA director nominee, newly minted Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) focused on what’s really important in the world of intelligence gathering: global warming. “In the past you have questioned the scientific consensus on climate change,” Harris asked CIA nominee Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas).

In addition to the Department of Natural Resources, a second state agency has scrubbed information on global warming from its website For years, the Public Service Commission featured material devoted to climate change, including strategies designed to reduce Wisconsin's reliance on coal. Then, sometime after May 1, the agency eliminated its global warming web page. ... The PSC's former global warming web page featured, among other topics, links on the potential for development of wind turbines on the Great Lakes and exploring the potential for injecting carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants in the ground. Those topics can be still...

After Words with Paul Sabin Paul Sabin talked about his book, The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future, in which he analyzes a bet made between economist Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich. More than 30 years ago, Mr. Simon made a bet with Mr. Ehrlich on the future prices of five metals, asserting that technological change and a booming market would keep the country prosperous. But Mr. Ehrlich predicted that rising populations would lead to overconsumption, taxed resources, and famine. Mr. Sabin argued that the opposing perspectives of the bettors - faith in free...

Bill Nye took to Twitter to blame man-made global warming for flooding across Northern California that claimed at least three lives over the weekend. Nye, who rarely misses a chance to link extreme weather to human activities, suggested California’s flooding meant we’d be better off not pulling out of the United Nations Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. President-elect Donald Trump promised to “cancel” the Paris agreement the Obama administration signed in 2016. The Senate never voted on the agreement.

Brown's reign of madness over California. Halting Brown foolish hysteria is only the first step in saving California. Climate change is California Gov. Jerry Brown’s “crusade,” his jihad, his holy war. Yet Gov. Brown’s climate change and drought policy is flooded with a manic madness - never has his manic obsession with climate change been more evident. California’s drought conditions are actually historically normal; water shortages are created by incompetent and scheming government In March on Meet the Press, after declaring Ted Cruz unfit to run for president because of his views on climate change, Brown said, “We are running...

Countries around the world are trying to get their greenhouse gas emissions under control — to see them inch down, percentage point by percentage point, from where they stood earlier in the century. If everybody gets on board, and shaves off enough of those percentage points, we just might be able to get on a trajectory to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius above the temperature where it stood prior to industrialization. But if a new study is correct, there’s a big problem: There might be more greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere than we thought....

ExxonMobil has lost a key battle in an investigation into whether the oil giant misled the public about the dangers of climate change. A Massachusetts judge ordered Exxon (XOM) on Wednesday to hand over more than four decades of the company's climate change research. The court rejected Exxon's emergency motion to kill the demand from Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is investigating allegations the company ignored internal scientific research going back to the 1970s. The ruling came on the same day that longtime Exxon boss Rex Tillerson was being grilled by Congress about the company's climate change tactics at...

It certainly reads like a political statement: Next week, one day before Donald J. Trump takes the presidential oath of office, the Sundance Film Festival will open its 33rd edition with a climate-change documentary starring Al Gore. Mr. Trump has mocked the science of global warming as a Chinese hoax and selected a climate-change denialist to run the Environmental Protection Agency. What better way for the very liberal Sundance to respond than to put forward “An Inconvenient Sequel,” the follow-up to the Oscar winner “An Inconvenient Truth”?

President-Elect Trump has pierced the veils surrounding the holy of holies wherein reside the eco-dogmatists of the EPA and the U.N. and promises the rightful return of respect to the essence of scientific research, skepticism. ... Federal agencies promoted the concept [that CO2 is an earth-destroying pollutant] and dispensed billions of dollars in lavishly funding scientists and commercial interests willing to pervert the term “climate change,” a constant feature of geohistory, into a man-made threat and a money-making commercial enterprise. Climate computer-derived forecasts have consistently failed to match long-term climate reality. Much of the error results from the dogmatic insistence...

The Obama administration warned Monday that polar bears may disappear unless something is done about climate change, despite recent research indicating that the bears are actually thriving. In its final Conservation Management Plan, the Fish and Wildlife Service painted a grim picture for the future of the massive Arctic-dwelling mammal, warning that its fate will be determined “by our willingness and ability to address climate change.” “The current global polar bear population is estimated to be 26,000,” said the FWS press release. “If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at the current rates throughout the 21st century, polar bears will...

TSIHOMBE, Madagascar — She is just a frightened mom, worrying if her son will survive, and certainly not fretting about American politics — for she has never heard of either President Obama or Donald Trump. What about America itself? Ranomasy, who lives in an isolated village on this island of Madagascar off southern Africa, shakes her head. It doesn’t ring any bells. Yet we Americans may be inadvertently killing her infant son. Climate change, disproportionately caused by carbon emissions from America, seems to be behind a severe drought that has led crops to wilt across seven countries in southern Africa....

Not being able to sell rural voters on the importance of switching from fossil fuels to solar and wind power is Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy’s biggest regret, she said Friday. “We tried to change the outreach and messaging in rural America in a number of ways, but … has it changed the rhetoric that people hear? It hasn’t,” McCarthy said in an interview at EPA headquarters. “We couldn’t get it, but I wish we had.” President Barack Obama nominated McCarthy to lead the agency in 2013. Her tenure has been riddled with controversies and marred by heavy-handed...

Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry told Fox News host Tucker Carlson she was so sick of politicization of global warming in academia she resigned from her tenured position at Georgia Tech. “I’ve been vilified by some of my colleagues who are activists and don’t like anybody challenging their big story,” Curry told Carlson Friday night. “I walk around with knives sticking out of my back,” she said. “In the university environment I felt like I was just beating my head against the wall.”

The country experienced its coldest winter night on Thursday as the mercury dropped to –26°C in some places — the coldest it has been in the 2016-17 season. Thursday night was the coldest so far this winter, with temperatures in parts of Thuringia and atop Germany’s highest mountain dropping to below –26°C. The German Weather Service (DWD) reported that southern Germany between Franconian Switzerland and Upper Palatinate in Bavaria were particularly affected by below-freezing temperatures. In Schorndorf-Knöbling, the thermometers were still reading around –22.6°C by 9am on Friday morning. …

Istanbul (AFP) - A heavy snowstorm paralysed life in Istanbul on Saturday, with hundreds of flights cancelled and the Bosphorus closed to shipping traffic. Almost 65 centimetres (25 inches) of snow fell on parts of the Turkish metropolis overnight and during the day, causing havoc on roads as travellers sought to leave the city for the weekend.