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With the spectacular cold event now spreading over much of the contiguous U.S. (and still expected to bring 30 below zero temperatures in Yellowstone Lake, WY tomorrow morning) the snow forecast for the next 8 days shows only 6 states that should miss snow (graphics courtesy of Weatherbell.com, click for full-size):

Bloomberg article, so just a link.

One of the greatest inanities that occurs in the climate wars is the claim that skeptics are lavishly funded by “big oil” or other political interests. t is a claim that is made multiple times daily and blogs and newspaper articles and magazine articles and yet where is the evidence that such a thing is a reality? I’m often targeted as being in the pay of one of those interest and yet when you look at my reality I had to beg for help to get to Bristol, to visit the Mann and Cook lectures. I relied on the good...

**SNIP** Dr. Schuiling’s idea is one of several intended to reduce levels of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, so the atmosphere will trap less heat. Other approaches, potentially faster and more doable but riskier, would create the equivalent of a sunshade around the planet by scattering reflective droplets in the stratosphere or spraying seawater to create more clouds over the oceans. Less sunlight reaching the earth’s surface would mean less heat to be trapped, resulting in a quick lowering of temperatures. No one can say for sure whether geoengineering of any kind would work. And many of the approaches are...

Forget about polar vortex as an excuse for how global warming is causing extreme cold weather. A brave new word seems to have replaced it: "bombogenesis." The most enthusiastic promoter of bombogenesis in the mainstream media is non climate expert, physicist Michio Kaku. Although Kaku previously used the polar vortex excuse frequently, he has now enthusiastically embraced "bombogenesis" as you can see in his CBS This Morning report below which he delivers in such apocalyptic terms that he claims the weather will be so extreme later this week that the temperature drop will last most of the rest of this...

Having been buoyed by the election results this year, I did not suffer my usual depression of adjusting the clocks back to daylight standard time as deeply as usual. It seems some folks are very sensitive to this biannual experiment with time. Some suffer in the spring as we, “spring forward” and others, like me, have a hard time adjusting to the early darkness of, “falling back”.

The humble coca shrub has survived decades of efforts to eradicate it and global warming will not pose a greater challenge than that Few cry for the cocaleros. Cocaine is the bane of law enforcement across the Americas. But both the drug and the coca farmers – known in Spanish as cocaleros – who cultivate the drug's source face the same threats as any other crop or product in our warming climate. Except that cocaine appears ready for the challenges. The coca bush is the raw material for a lucrative and often-violent drug trade and the target of decades of...

Vary long explanation of the "polar vortex" that will, supposedly, attack this coming week. Very interesting explanation. Things are not as some forecasters might portray it. It's still going to be ugly, possibly for Thanksgiving. Joe argues for more research for short term forcasting, because the current modeling isn't terribly accurate because of changes, maybe because of solar dimming. Maybe. But this is the problem; that there isn't enough research done for short-term forecasting. Case in point: The sudden crash of the Southern Oscillation index and its effect on the feedback of heat from energy released by convection activity is...

I was hoping to find a ping list for us heretical climate deniers. Does one exist?

Gullible journalists are swooning today with more and glorious prophesies of disaster.This from the team that relies on simulations that not only fail on global scales1, but they can’t predict regional2, local3, short term, continental, or polar effects4 either. They are also wrong about humidity5, rainfall6a,6b,6c, drought7 and clouds8, as well as the all-important upper tropospheric patterns too.9, 10 Speaking to the BBC earlier, Dr Pachaudri said today’s announcement was, categorically, the “strongest, most robust and most comprehensive” document that the IPCC has produced.  — BBC They are robustly, comprehensively, and consistently wrong.  But it’s OK, they only want 0.06%...

On election night in a hotel ballroom in Anchorage, Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski picked up a chair and waved it over her head. "I am the chairmaaaaaaaaaaan!" she shouted. The Republican takeover Tuesday night puts Murkowski in charge of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. That's great news for Alaska, which is always eager for the feds to allow more oil drilling up here. But what does her chairmanship mean for the other side of that coin — global warming? At that same election-night party, Murkowski said she takes climate change seriously. "I come from a state where...

The GOP's Senate takeover means the chamber's leadership positions will be filled with Republicans next year. That's bad news for the environment: The Senate’s worst climate change denier, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, will likely chair the Environment and Public Works Committee. But it's also bad news for science: Texas Senator Ted Cruz, another climate denier, may be next-in-line to become chair of the Subcommittee on Science and Space, which oversees agencies like the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In a February interview with CNN, Cruz said he doesn’t think the Earth...

There are many reasons to celebrate the Republican party surge in the US mid-term elections but for me they boil down to two words: "Tom" and "Steyer." If you had to pick one person who embodied everything that is most irritating and wrong about the Obama administration - the Solyndra-style crony capitalism, the war on free markets, small business and cheap energy, the hypocrisy, the injustice, the dogged pursuit of suicidal leftist causes - then liberal billionaire Tom Steyer is your man. And this is what is so good about the US mid-term results. Not only did they personally cost...

Alex Sosnowski November 5, 2014 The atmosphere is preparing to send part of the polar vortex southward toward the US next week with an outbreak of arctic air and lake-effect snow. The polar vortex is a large pocket of very cold air, typically the coldest air in the Northern Hemisphere, which sits over the polar region. Occasionally, this pocket of very cold air can get dislodged farther south than normal, leading to cold outbreaks in Canada and the US. The main blast of cold air associated with the plunging polar vortex will swing southeastward into the Central and Eastern states...

On Tuesday night, Republicans won big: They picked up governorships in blue states like Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois, and they held House seats in competitive districts with embarrassing incumbents like Michael Grimm of New York, who physically threatened a reporter and is under indictment for tax evasion. But their biggest win by far was taking control of the U.S. Senate. As of this writing, Republicans had already secured 52 Senate seats, thanks to knocking off Democratic incumbents or replacing retiring Democrats in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Another GOP pick up is probable in...

In the green hills and gray hollows of Kentucky's well-mined mountains, the economy of extracting coal from the fuel-rich ground isn't what it once was. Yet Mitch McConnell, a longtime senator poised to become majority leader of the U.S. Senate in a Congress that will be fully controlled by his Republican Party come January, has found political fortune in those hills. He successfully campaigned for reelection there with warnings about a "war on coal" he accuses Democratic President Barack Obama of waging. This helps explain what the United States won't be doing about global warming in the near future. (Read...

Sen. James M. Inhofe, an the Oklahoma Republican who once compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the gestapo, is likely to lead the Environment and Public Works Committee when the GOP takes control of the Senate next year. If approved, Inhofe would replace Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), an avowed environmentalist, producing one of the most stark post-election changes in the Capitol. Committee assignments will not be made until Senate party caucuses meet in Washington after the election recess. Inhofe, who has served in the Senate for two decades, is an iconic figure to both environmental and energy lobbyists. He chaired...

Junk Science: The high priests of the climate change religion decree in a recipe for global poverty that renewable energy must generate most of the world's electricity, with fossil fuels purged by the end of this century. In a report released in Copenhagen on Sunday that Secretary of State John Kerry has called "another canary in a coal mine," the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recycled its prophecies of doom. The document is titled "Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report." The "synthesis" refers to the report's being essentially the "greatest hits" of prior climate assessment reports that...

In handing Republicans control of the Senate on Tuesday, Americans effectively voted for the party's hostile plans against President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy. Their votes also put the Senate's environment and climate policy into the hands of the worst science-denier in national politics: Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who is almost certainly the next chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe claimed in 2003 that global warming might help humanity. “It's also important to question whether global warming is even a problem for human existence. Thus far no one has seriously demonstrated any scientific proof that increased global...

**SNIP** FOR THE RECORD: A Nov. 2 op-ed about dogs and the environment said that methane was 30% more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Recent research suggests that the effect of methane on climate change is at least 30 times that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. What, were you staring at your iPhone, dragging the dog behind? Daydreaming? Or are you with Sydney, Jason Segel's character in "I Love You, Man," thinking that dog doo actually benefits the environment. ("It's got tons of nutrients.") That's true, in a way. Dog poop does contain nutrients — the...