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Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the January 6 House Select Committee was having a significant impact on public opinion. Anchor Jonathan Karl asked, “What’s your reaction been watching these hearings, and what kind of impact do you think they’re going have?” Gore said, “I’d like to say that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney and every single member of that committee have performed an amazing service to our democracy. I think these hearings have been the most persuasive and effective since the Watergate hearings so long ago. And I think we’re seeing a huge...

1988 was a barn-burner year for climate alarmists. Then-Sen. Al Gore’s steamy congressional hearing trumpeted a planet on fire, and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created to produce pseudo-scientific evidence blaming it on unfair capitalist industrial prosperity-spawned CO2 emissions. Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart explained the real cause for urgency. She told editors and reporters of the Calgary Herald, “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony . . . climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” Stewart was wrong. Consequences of that phony science...

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Climate change could put Bermuda at risk of greater economic damage and dent its sovereign credit rating more than many countries and islands. That is the finding of a speculative report by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services. Using direct damage data from Swiss Re, the agency estimated the possible adverse effect of climate change on 38 countries. It based its measurements on the expectation of a once-in-250-year natural catastrophe event striking, and the impact being exacerbated a further 20 per cent to represent the magnified additional damage expected to be inflicted due to climate change. Projected out 35 years to...

As world leaders in Paris scramble to reach a climate agreement aimed to mitigate the consequences of untamed greenhouse gas emissions, they have been dealt a rare dose of good news. Scientists writing in the journal Nature Climate Change estimate that for the first time in the last 15 years, global carbon dioxide emissions have flatlined, and possibly even declined. "It is difficult to overstate the significance of this development," said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. "What it shows is that we are indeed now turning the corner in transition from a...

Britain's Prince Charles has blamed climate change in part for the Syrian war and warned that global warming could exacerbate similar conflicts worldwide. Charles's comments — in an interview broadcast Monday — came exactly one week before the start of a United Nations climate change conference in Paris, where he plans to deliver a keynote address. Unless world leaders take action to slow the impact of climate change, "it’s going to get so much worse," Charles warned in the interview with Sky News, which was recorded before the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. "Some of us were saying 20...

Even with Pope Francis happily aboard the ‘Good Ship Global Warming’, proving that climate change is the world’s biggest threat could be as elusive as proving Bruce Jenner is a woman. All the artful make-up in the world; all the get-ups she can wriggle into; being the star of her very own reality TV show; the Kardashian kick into instant fame cannot possibly make Bruce La Femme all because of one little leftover in his transitioning anatomy. Feminist Germaine Greer in her dotage needn’t worry that Jenner will be crowned ‘Woman of the Year’ because even Glamour magazine cannot afford...

Apple CEO Tim Cook is joining the CEO Council for Sustainable Urbanization, a group formed by the Paulson Institute and the China Center for International Economic Exchanges in order to divert the environmental impact of China's urban growth. "Apple is committed to running our global operations on 100 percent renewable energy and we're working hard to reduce emissions throughout our global supply chain," Cook said in prepared statement from the Paulson Institute. "We look forward to participating in the CEO Council's effort to advance China's green transformation and hope to do our part in helping China reach its climate goals."

The Climate Change Business Journal has calculated that global warming is now a $1.5 trillion a year industry. The Business Journal’s report is not available for free online, but its findings are reviewed by the Insurance Journal. They are eye-opening, to say the least: The $1.5 trillion global “climate change industry” grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008, slowing to between 4 and 6 percent following the recession with the exception of 2011’s inexplicable 15 percent growth, according to Climate Change Business Journal. The San Diego, Calif.-based publication includes within that industry nine segments and 38 sub-segments....

You may have a "green" car, but it could be causing black rain in China from the graphite mined and used in its lithium ion battery. Two academics at Toronto's York University, Carla Lipsig-Mumme and Caleb Goods, applaud many of the new advances in green technology in recent years, but at the same time warn that those very technologies may come with a host of environmental issues. The pair issue a caution about “superindustrialization” in which the answer to climate change is a matter of “technological adjustment.” In an article recently published in The Conversation and picked up by the...

New research confirms that the land under the Chesapeake Bay is sinking rapidly and projects that Washington, D.C., could drop by six or more inches in the next century—adding to the problems of sea-level rise. This falling land will exacerbate the flooding that the nation’s capital faces from rising ocean waters due to a warming climate and melting ice sheets—accelerating the threat to the region’s monuments, roads, wildlife refuges, and military installations. For sixty years, tide gauges have shown that sea level in the Chesapeake is rising at twice the global average rate and faster than elsewhere on the East...

WASHINGTON: Extra heat from greenhouse gases has been trapped in the waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans in recent years, which may explain the so-called 'pause' in global warming observed during the past decade, according to a new NASA study. Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California, found a specific layer of the Indian and Pacific oceans between 100 and 300 metres below the surface has been accumulating more heat than previously recognised. During the 20th century, as greenhouse gas concentrations increased and trapped more heat energy on Earth, global surface temperatures also increased. However, in the 21st...

Bumblebees, a linchpin of the global food supply, are vanishing across huge swaths of North America and Europe as a result of climate change, a new study says. The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, apparently solve a mystery that's alarmed farmers, experts, policymakers and environmental advocates worldwide, as well as bedeviled researchers. While habitat destruction and potent pesticides known as neonicotinoids have destroyed some bumblebee populations, researchers concluded climate change has played the greatest role in the mass disappearance of bumblebee species, which pollinate plants and crops that are part of the food supply for both animals and...

Pope ends first leg of his three-nation South American tour with impassioned plea to safeguard the environmentDelivered message in Ecuador, which has one of the world's most diverse ecosystems but is also reliant on oil He said: 'As stewards of these riches, we have an obligation toward society and toward future generations' (...) 'As stewards of these riches which we have received, we have an obligation toward society as a whole and toward future generations,' Francis said. 'We cannot bequeath this heritage to them without proper care for the environment, without a sense of gratuitousness born of our contemplation...

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Human activity has pushed the planet across four of nine environmental boundaries, sending the world towards a "danger zone", according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Science. Climate change, biodiversity loss, changes in land use, and altered biogeochemical cycles due in part to fertilizer use have fundamentally changed how the planet functions, the study said. These changes destabilize complex interactions between people, oceans, land and the atmosphere, said the paper "Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet" by 18 leading international researchers.

As Secretary of State John Kerry and other ministers prepare to join global climate talks in Peru, the U.N.’s environmental agency is claiming that the cost for the planet to “adapt” to global warming could be up to five times higher than previously estimated – a whopping $500 billion a year by mid-century.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the United States needed to do more to fight climate change and told Congress he would do so by executive action if it failed to pursue a market-based system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago," Obama said, according to the text of his address provided by the White House.

By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of ClimateWire NEW YORK -- New York state is beginning to take the threat of sea level rise attributed to climate change seriously as a new government prepares to settle in next year. Starting Monday, state officials in Albany will gather with members of the public to discuss a recently released 93-page report that recommends major changes to development planning and conservation along coastlines from the tip of Long Island all way up the Hudson River Valley. Any reforms to come from the process, starting next week, would affect about 62 percent of New York state's population,...

Just when you thought environmental extremists couldn’t go any further, they surprise you with yet another ploy in their never-ending quest to turn back modernity. With the public push-back on the cap-and-trade scheme and creating man-made droughts to save a 2-inch fish, environmentalists have become craftier in their efforts. Always the vanguard of the latest environmental regulation, California has a new idea for getting polluters out of their cars: get rid of free parking. Last week the State Senate passed Senate Bill 518, legislation that would incentivize local governments to begin abolishing free parking spaces within their jurisdictions. The goal...

Perhaps when the history of our times is written, ours will be called The Era of Narcissistic Catechisms. To understand why this is the case it is enough to consider the fortunes of two green movements. On the main stage of global affairs this week we have the much touted UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. Standing with 15,000 delegates representing green activism groups and politically correct scientists the world over are international celebrity leaders like Nobel Peace Prize laureates Barack Obama, Al Gore and Desmond Tutu and their fellow celebrities and Oscar and Grammy winners Al Gore, Leonardo Dicaprio,...