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Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be "treated", according to an Oregon-based professor of "sociology and environmental studies". Professor Kari Norgaard compares the struggle against climate scepticism to that against racism and slavery in the US South. Prof Norgaard holds a B.S. in biology and a master's and PhD in sociology.

He looked like a former linebacker, tall and solidly built. After stowing his wife's luggage in the overhead, he squeezed past me, sat down and looked straight at the astronomy textbook I was reading. "You're a scientist?" he asked. "Are you involved in that big controversy over climate?" I looked into his face and could see he wasn't angry or hostile or combative. He seemed like a good guy and, by the way his wife gently rolled her eyes, I could see he liked to talk. So I took a chance and replied. "What controversy?" What followed was a long...

Australia is stepping back from the cliff We shouldn’t underestimate shift that has just taken place. The psychology of Australian politics moved as the large swinging center was revealed. Not only was the Queensland election worse for Labor than anyone predicted, the message was clear, voters rejected the lies, and rejected the carbon tax. The smear campaign by the Labor leader (Bligh) did more harm to her than it did to her target. Finally, the Hype-&-Spin Machine ran off the rails.This is real progress. Today both Queensland and Victoria are peeling back the warmist bureaucracy. I’m happy.The new premier of...

Warming has led to changes in climate extremes such as heat waves, record high temperatures and, in many regions, heavy precipitation since 1950, the U.N. climate panel warned in a report Wednesday. "It is very likely that there has been an overall decrease in the number of cold days and nights, and an overall increase in the number of warm days and nights, at the global scale," the scientists wrote. Some populations are already living on the edge of disaster, given the projected increases in the magnitude or frequency of some extreme events in many regions, the report stated. "Small...

THEY are responsible for some of the government's most important policies - but staff at the Department of Energy and Climate Change are too ashamed to admit where they work. Staff morale is so low the government has spent almost $175,000 on consultants to lift staff's flagging spirits. A negative public image of the department, changing environmental policies and lack of internal support had left them feeling miserable and disengaged, an internal report has found. The report was conducted by consultants Right Management in July 2010 when the department was under the responsibility of Finance and Deregulation Minister Penny Wong....

(FOX News) - The Green Climate Fund, which is supposed to help mobilize as much as $100 billion a year to lower global greenhouse gases, is seeking a broad blanket of UN-style immunity that would shield its operations from any kind of legal process, including civil and criminal prosecution, in the countries where it operates. There is just one problem: it is not part of the United Nations.

More peer-reviewed science contradicting the warming-alarmist "scientific consensus" was announced yesterday, as a new study shows that the well-documented warm period which took place in medieval times was not limited to Europe, or the northern hemisphere: it reached all the way to Antarctica. The research involved the development of a new means of assessing past temperatures, to add to existing methods such as tree ring analysis and ice cores. In this study, scientists analysed samples of a crystal called ikaite, which forms in cold waters. “Ikaite is an icy version of limestone,” explains earth-sciences prof Zunli Lu. “The crystals are...

Efforts to stem global warming have nurtured a strong urge worldwide to deploy renewable energy. As a result, the use of wind turbines has increased 10-fold over the past decade, with wind power often touted as the most cost-effective green opportunity. While wind energy is cheaper than other, more ineffective renewables, such as solar, tidal and ethanol, it is nowhere near competitive. If it were, we wouldn't have to keep spending significant sums to subsidise it. Using the UK Electricity Generation Costs 2010 update and measuring in cost per produced kw-hour, wind is still 20-200% more expensive than the cheapest...

“Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing,” Strauss told The New York Times. “We have a closing window of time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas.”

Living along New Jersey’s 127 miles of coastline has always posed something of a risk. Terms like coastal flooding, erosion and nor’easter have long been a part of the vocabulary of residents on the Shore. But new research predicts rising sea levels due to global warming will more than triple the likelihood of devastating coastal flooding by the year 2030, putting more than 230,000 beach and bay-side residents in the flood zone. Put simply, the once in a lifetime coastal storm may soon come around once in a generation. "Sea level rise is not some distant problem that we can...

President Obama blasted his Republican critics Thursday for their resistance to investing in alternative energy sources, comparing their stance to the beliefs of those who thought that Columbus would sail off the edge of the world. In another in a series of speeches defending his energy policies, Obama touted his push for green energy growth — including wind and solar power, electric cars and biofuels — as a way to help wean the nation from a dependence on foreign oil. And he mocked his rivals for failing to embrace his ideas. “If some of these folks were around when Columbus...

The groups currently drafting new science standards for American classrooms have decided to include a section addressing the issue of climate change. The Congressionally chartered National Academies, including the National Research Council, plan to include a document drafted last year that says that human activities have at least a partial impact on climate.Although there’s a strong consensus in scientific literature on anthropogenic climate change, in America the issue is a source of significant controversy and debate. Just how strident the debate over climate change had become came as a surprise to one California middle school teacher: When Treena Joi, a...

WASHINGTON — Global warming-fueled sea level rise over the next century could flood 3.7 million people in 544 U.S. cities temporarily, according to a new method of looking at risking of rising seas published in two scientific papers. The cities that have the most people living within three feet (one meter) of high tide — the projected sea level rise by the year 2100 made by many scientists and computer models — are in Florida, Louisiana, and New York. New York City, often not thought of as a city prone to flooding, has 141,000 people at risk, which is second...

Little by little, the federal Department of Education appropriates ever more power for itself. (Never mind that the department might very well be unconstitutional in the first place.) Today, most public schools are dependent one way or another on federal funds. Those funds don’t come without strings — and, under the Obama administration, bureaucrats have tightened those strings considerably. Through the Race to the Top competition, the Ed Department enticed states with reward funds to adopt national standards. (Some state leaders — like Texas Gov. Rick Perry — turned down the funding, but they were the exceptions.) The common core...

After many years in which evolution was the most contentious issue in science education, climate change is now the battle du jour in school districts across the country. The fight could heat up further in April, when several national bodies are set to release a draft of new science standards that include detailed instruction on climate change. The groups preparing the standards include the National Research Council, which is part of the congressionally chartered National Academies. They are working from a document they drew up last year that says climate change is caused in part by manmade events, such as...

How the regulating class is using bogus claims about climate change to entrench and extend their economic privileges and political control.Guest Post: Dr David M.W. Evans, 29 Feb 2012, last updated 13 Mar 2012, latest pdf hereThe Science The sister article Climate Coup—The Science (a more mainstream version of The Skeptic’s Case) contains the science foundation for this essay. It checks the track record of the climate models against our best and latest data, from impeccable sources. It details how you can download this data yourself. It finds that the climate models got all their major predictions wrong: Test Climate...

Schenectady, NY - THE NEWS that Lord Monckton was to give his “Climate of Freedom” lecture at Union College in Schenectady, New York, had thrown the university’s environmentalists into a turmoil. The campus environmentalists set up a Facebook page announcing a counter-meeting of their own immediately following Monckton’s lecture. There is no debate about global warming, they announced. There is a consensus. The science is settled. Their meeting would be addressed by professors and PhDs, the “true” scientists, no less. Sparks, it seemed, were gonna fly. Traveling with Lord Monckton on the East Coast leg of his current whistle-stop tour...

Ordinary people are not putting enough pressure on governments to deliver a legally binding deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the U.N.'s climate chief said. "There is not enough well up from the bottom up. I don't see millions of citizens demanding climate action," Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said at a lecture on Friday. "The reality we have to deal with is the process is very slow and the urgency is every day growing. The only way out is to continue to push on the government side but we can't depend 100...

MILLIONS of dollars in government research funding is being ploughed into studies of emotion in climate change messages, ancient economic life in Italy and the history of the moon. Studies of sleeping snails and determining if Australian birds are getting smaller because of climate change have also been allocated funding in the latest round of grants totalling $300 million by the Australian Research Council. Another project titled "Sending and responding to messages about climate change: the role of emotion and morality" by a Queensland university secured $197,302. The council said it was an important psychology project. The study to determine...

In the 1970s it seemed like we had problems we could never fix — and I'm not talking about white polyester disco suits and the band Air Supply. To punctuate the dismal vibe, everybody smoked, or so it seemed if you were sitting on an airplane at the edge of the DMZ between the smoking and nonsmoking sections. But then something funny happened. We tackled those problems. A move toward more fuel-efficient vehicles, plus Alaskan oil and geopolitical changes, gave us a breather from the tyranny of oil. How'd we do it? The answer is worth considering as we struggle...