Free Republic

Here's one way to solve global warming: Spend $90 trillion (£59 trillion) over the next few years to redesign all the cities — as in all the cities on earth — so people live in more densely packed neighborhoods and don't need cars.

The symbolic doomsday clock moved to three minutes before midnight on Thursday because of the gathering dangers of climate change and nuclear proliferation, signalling the gravest threat to humanity since the throes of the cold war. It was the closest the clock has come to midnight since 1984, when arms-control negotiations stalled and virtually all channels of communication between the US and the former Soviet Union closed down. $cientists suggested that the greater danger lay in the failure of leaders to recognise and act on climate change. “Stunning government failures have imperiled civilisations on a global scale,” Benedict said. “World...

The GOP accepts the notion of climate change - but not the way Democrats wanted them to.Senate Republicans head-faked Democrats on climate change Wednesday, agreeing in a floor vote that the planet’s climate was changing, but blocking language that would have blamed human activity. In a complicated maneuver that was the first politically perilous test for Senate Republicans, the new majority party split up the votes that Democrats had hoped would force the GOP into an awkward roll call on whether they believed in the science behind climate change — just hours after President Barack Obama slammed Republicans in his...

Most U.S. senators now agree on two things about climate change: That it is driven by humans, and that it is not a hoax. Getting to that point during a series of votes on amendments for Keystone XL pipeline legislation was tortuous for Democrats and Republicans alike. "I'm not sure that there were any clear expectations, but I think the way the day transpired was productive but it was also fascinating," Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told reporters. "We made good progress today and we were pretty pleased there is an emerging bipartisan group of people who believe climate change is...

An MIT professor of meteorology is dismissing global-warming alarmists as a discredited “cult” whose members are becoming more hysterical as emerging evidence continues to contradict their beliefs. During an appearance on this writer’s radio show Monday, MIT Professor emeritus Richard Lindzen discussed the religious nature of the movement. “As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical. I think that’s what’s happening here. Think about it,” he said. “You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re...

Al Gore and Pharrell Williams took to the stage at the Davos Economic Forum on Wednesday to announce the second iteration of Live Earth, a series of worldwide concerts to raise awareness of climate change. Gore and Williams were joined by Live Earth co-founder Kevin Wall to announce the concerts, which will take place across all seven continents on June 18, according to the Guardian. The event hopes to capture a global television audience of 2 billion across 193 television networks. Williams, who performed at the first round of Live Earth concerts in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, will reportedly...

During the past billion years, the Earth's climate has fluctuated between warm periods—sometimes even completely ice-free—and cold periods, when glaciers scour the continents. In this article, climate scientist Kirk Maasch offers perspective on these historic changes, including the likely causes of the last great ice age—which contrary to common knowledge, we are still in the midst of... ...The globally averaged surface temperature for the Earth is approximately 15 degrees Celsius, and this is due largely to the greenhouse effect. Solar radiation entering earth's atmosphere is predominantly short wave, while heat radiated from the Earth's surface is long wave. Water vapor,...

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe criticized President Barack Obama’s doubling down on fighting global warming Tuesday night, arguing that the president’s planned climate regulations was simply “a wealth redistribution scheme.” “Why the pain for no gain?” Inhofe asked in a rebuttal to Obama’s State of the Union speech. ”As The Wall Street Journal put it when reporting on just one of the president’s many climate regulations, this is a wealth redistribution scheme being imposed by the president through the EPA.” “This is the real climate agenda the president chose not to address tonight. It is no wonder because it would...

Last year, government scientists tell us, was the hottest year on record. This news is terribly — what's the word? — inconvenient. No, not for polar bears or drought victims or coastal dwellers. It's inconvenient for politicians across the country who, despite whatever data or overwhelming scientific consensus might be proffered, insist on denying global warming. In recent weeks, West Virginia has snatched national headlines for its attempts to doctor school science standards to discredit climate change. The sixth-grade science curriculum, for example, was amended so that, rather than having students "clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the...

Today, the new Republican-led Senate gave conservatives a frightening preview of how we might expect to see the rest of the 114th Congress play out. Instead of using their new majority to support conservative policy, in one of the first votes of the year the Senate overwhelmingly passed a liberal green “energy efficiency” amendment offered by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) in a roll call vote of 94-5. The five members who voted against the amendment were: Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), James Lankford (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ben Sasse (R-NE), and Rand Paul (R-KY). Last year, Republican...

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced major new regulations on the emissions of methane into the air from oil and gas production. It calls methane a “potent” pollutant and its new rules would require a 45 percent reduction by 2025 from 2012 levels. Most Americans support these new rules, according to polling from environmental groups. This isn’t surprising. Methane sounds like a dirty and dangerous pollutant and even deadly if leaked into water or the air. However, methane is just another term for the main component of natural gas. Drillers have a powerful motive to stop leakage on...

The U.S. ocean, atmospheric and space agencies affirmed on Friday what the planet has been telling us every way it knows how: 2014 was the hottest year since record keeping began in 1880. That means average land and sea temperatures, worldwide, have never been hotter in modern times, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (the gold standard for global climate data) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (the guys who put a man on the moon). This isn't about whether we believe in science: It's about whether we believe the thermometer. In fact, the 16 hottest years...

OR: Why I Should Have Been an Engineer Rather than a Climate Scientist I’ve been inundated with requests this past week to comment on the NOAA and NASA reports that 2014 was the “hottest” year on record. Since I was busy with a Japan space agency meeting in Tokyo, it has been difficult for me to formulate a quick response. Of course, I’ve addressed the “hottest year” claim before it ever came out, both here on October 21, and here on Dec. 4. In the three decades I’ve been in the climate research business, it’s been clear that politics have...

Crude oil prices have dropped to their lowest levels for six years, at under $50 a barrel. If they stay low throughout 2015 then it will cause headaches for the wind sector. This is one of the findings of our latest report, Wind Finance 2015. There are many reasons why oil prices have crashed, including the parlous state of the eurozone; slowing growth in China; and the decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to maintain high levels of production to put pressure on rivals, including fracking and renewables. The major risk for wind investors is that prolonged low...

Government agency desperately trying to keep the global warming hoax alive On January 16 The New York Times reported the lies NASA keeps telling about global warming with an article titled “2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics.” We have reached the point where neither a famed government agency nor a famed daily newspaper can be believed simply because both are lying to advance the greatest hoax of the modern era. Remember that 2014 started off with something called a “polar vortex” to describe the incredibly cold weather being experienced and remember, too, that we were being told that...

We were recently informed by the blaring of progressive trumpets and flapping of angelic wings that evil energy users had set a new record, with 2014 being the warmest year in recorded history. The end is clearly near, so you should all begin getting your affairs in order unless President Obama can rail through his new methane regulations. It is, as Mother Jones described it, a moment of truth. Well folks, what can I say? We had a good run.But wait! The phrase “moment of truth” ends with a rather important word. How “true” is this claim? The folks...

Yahoo! Spike that climate change football! The mainstream media has spent the past few days doing a victory dance in the endzone because of the announcement that 2014 was the hottest year on record based on instrument observations that the earth's temperature might have increased by a factor of two-hundreths of a degree centrigrade with a margin of error of a tenth of a degree centigrade....meaning that a decrease in temperature was also well within the margin of error. However, that fact did not diminish the triumphal certitude of the temperature increase "fact" by many MSM outets such as the...

The global warming establishment and the media are crowing about 2010 being in a tie for the “hottest year” ever. The UK Guardian headline sums up the media’s promotion: UK Guardian: ‘Hottest Year’ Claim: 2014 officially the ‘hottest year’ on record US government scientists say - ‘Nasa and Noaa scientists report 2014 was 0.07F (0.04C) higher than previous records…The global average temperatures over land and sea surface for the year was 1.24F (0.69C) above the 20th century average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and Nasa reported. The scientists said 2014 was 0.07F (0.04C) higher than the previous records...

London: A new study has recently revealed that manicured lawns are major source of greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming. Grass lawns soak up carbon dioxide, which is stored in the soil after the cut grass rots and so, like trees, they are considered good for the planet. But Dr. Chuanhui Gu of Appalachian State University in the US said that once the energy expended by mowing, fertilizer use and watering are taken into account, lawns actually produce more greenhouse gases than they soak up. The study is published in the Journal of Environmental Management.

Of course, the global highlights are what the mainstream media and alarmist blogs parrot. Some may even report on the Global Temperatures and Regional Temperatures portions of the NOAA report. Few will venture beyond that. BIAS OF OMISSION 1 It’s not until readers scroll down to the rankings table in the SOTC report that NOAA introduces uncertainties. See my Figure 1. So, according to NOAA, the “annually-averaged temperature was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), easily breaking the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.04°C (0.07°F)”, but then NOAA clarifies their global surface temperature anomalies...