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Manmade climate change is now dwarfing the influence of natural trends on the climate, scientists say. The acting director of the UK Met Office, Prof Peter Stott, told BBC News: "It's extraordinary that temperatures in 2017 have been so high when there's no El Niño. In fact, we’ve been going into cooler La Niña conditions. "Last year was substantially warmer than 1998 which had a very big El Niño. "It shows clearly that the biggest natural influence on the climate is being dwarfed by human activities – predominantly CO2; emissions." “The record temperature should focus the minds of world leaders,...

2017 was the hottest year since global records began that was not given an additional boost by the natural climate cycle El Niño, according to new data. Even without an El Niño, the year was still exceptionally hot, being one of the top three ever recorded. The three main global temperature records show the global surface temperature in 2017 was 1C above levels seen in pre-industrial times, with scientists certain that humanity’s fossil fuel-burning is to blame. The data, published on Thursday, means the last three years have been the hottest trio ever seen, with 2017 ranking second or third...

As we again break records for cold in the southern U.S., while sitting indoors trying to keep warm (and schooling my wife and kids in Trivial Pursuit), I stumbled across this on the AJC.com: Warm up your car this morning? That could be illegal where you live. According to the article, 31 states have laws against "idling." Some of these laws are rooted in some measure of common sense--to deter theft and the like--but many are the sad result of governments buying into the myth of man-made global warming. As the author of the AJC piece puts it, "Of course,...

Climate scientists on Wednesday suggested that they may be able to rule out some of the most dire scenarios of what would happen if greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere were to double. Unfortunately, the same scientists say the best-case scenarios are also probably unrealistic. How a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gases would affect the climate is of tremendous importance, as humans are running out of time to avoid that outcome. With current atmospheric concentrations at 405 parts per million, as opposed to about 280 parts per million before the dawn of the industrial era, the planet is already about...

In an interview with Reuters last week, Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said, "The climate is changing. That’s not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?" Pruitt’s goal is to sow doubt on behalf of his oil industry allies in order to weaken and delay climate policies. Shifting the ‘debate’ toward ‘the ideal surface temperature’ achieves that goal by creating the perception that we don’t know what temperature we should aim for. It’s in line with recent ignorant tweet suggesting that “Perhaps we could use a little bit of that...

The World Economic Forum delivered a strong warning about Donald Trump’s go-it-alone approach to tackling climate change as it highlighted the growing threat of environmental collapse in its annual assessment of the risks facing the international community. In the run-up to the US president’s speech to its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, next week, the WEF avoided mentioning Trump by name but said “nation-state unilateralism” would make it harder to tackle global warming and ecological damage. The WEF’s global risks perception survey showed Trump’s arrival in the White House in 2017 had coincided with a marked increase in concern about...

SEATTLE - If elected officials get their way, the entire West Coast of North America could be putting a price on pollution by the end of this year. As state legislature sessions opened this month, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee called for a carbon tax and Oregon legislators proposed a “cap and invest” system. Both policies are designed to make industrial emitters of carbon dioxide pay some of the costs of damage caused by growing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and to create incentives for them to reduce emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions are one of the major drivers...

MOSCOW: Temperatures reached -67 degrees Celsius in the remote Yakutia region in Russia on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. Pictures circulating on social media showed people posing with frozen eyelashes as temperatures reportedly fell to -50 degrees Celsius. Temperatures reached -67 degrees Celsius in Yakutia on Tuesday (Jan 16). A video posted on Twitter also showed a cup of boiling water solidifying after being poured out of a window. Blasting boiled water at -46.5C 😄 #Yakutsk pic.twitter.com/G6OdsSiIZ0 — Bolot Bochkarev (@yakutia) January 13, 2018 Residents in Yakutia are normally used to the freezing conditions, with students routinely going to school...

MOSCOW - Even thermometers can't keep up with the plunging temperatures in Russia's remote Yakutia region, which hit minus 67 degrees Celsius (minus 88.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas Tuesday. In Yakutia - a region of 1 million people about 3,300 miles (5,300 kilometers) east of Moscow - students routinely go to school even in minus 40 degrees. But school was canceled Tuesday throughout the region and police ordered parents to keep their children inside. Over the weekend, two men froze to death when they tried to walk to a nearby farm after their car broke down. Three other men...

The left is fond of trying to tie unrelated issues to gender, race, or sexual orientation. A recent example is Trump's description of some countries as "sh*tholes." His comment was considered racist even though everyone knows there are many nations where no one wants to live, or even visit. In this case, scoring the president for even daring to mention some nations are better than others set off a firestorm of false criticism. So, it shouldn't surprise us that the NAACP has taken two entirely different issues and has twisted logic into a pretzel in order to connect them....

There could be no starker illustration of the profound differences that exist between Washington and London -- despite alignment on many other issues -- than comments this week by our two leaders on climate change and the environment. For President Trump, the Paris Agreement is a bad deal that will close US businesses -- perhaps even has closed some already. Meanwhile, in London last week, Prime Minister Theresa May was launching the UK's 25-year Plan for Nature. Its flagship pledge is to "leave the environment in a better state than we found it". The evidence is entirely against the world...

According to the study published last week in the journal Science Advances, researchers with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany used computer simulations to study changing regional rainfall patterns. They found that the United States, Indonesia, Central Europe and parts of India and Africa will be particularly susceptible to dangerous flooding in the decades to come. The researchers point out that the risk of river flooding will rise despite efforts to rein in climate change by curbing greenhouse emissions. They say the greenhouse gases already emitted in past decades have done irreversible harm. Should global warming exceed...

Los Angeles could join New York City and other California cities in a lawsuit targeting Exxon Mobil for supposedly contributing to global warming and rising sea levels. Two Los Angeles city council members want the city to use the courts to fleece fossil-fuel producers to mitigate the effects of global warming. They are hoping to join the likes of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who announced earlier this month that his city will take Exxon to court.

California is poised to meet its goal to reduce greenhouse gases 33 percent, to 1990 levels, by the year 2020. Its targets for use of more renewable energy by that date are, in some cases, already exceeded. ...hold on tight for what comes next. The state’s overarching plan was intended to ease industry and consumers into a carbon-free future bit by bit; ten years in, the training wheels are off. Emissions-reduction must hit 40 percent by 2030 and twice that by 2050. In 12 years, half the state’s energy must come from renewable sources. 14 million buildings must operate twice...

This Siberian village's thermometer broke last night because of how cold it was. Oymyakon, in the Siberian region of Yakutia, is the coldest inhabited village on Earth. Each winter, it records some of the world's lowest temperatures and the town seems frozen in time. On 14 January, Oymyakon got so cold, its brand new thermometer broke after reaching a mind numbing -62C, reports the Siberian Times. In comparison, the only other places to get this cold or colder are unpopulated areas of Antarctica. But locals have reported temperatures far colder than the official -62C on their properties, thanks to their...

Some strange booms have shaken residents in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. The series of explosion-like sounds rattled residents from Waupun, Campbellsport and elsewhere Tuesday and sent Fond du Lac County sheriff's deputies out looking for a cause. Geologists say the booms were likely a phenomenon commonly known as an ice quake.

Climate change is first and foremost a threat to human society. That fact has been somewhat obscured in regular discourse, in favor of a false dichotomy portraying climate policy as an upper-middle-class noblesse oblige idea for anxious birders and other environmentalist types, and hardheaded economists who think building up yet more wealth is more important. In reality, one obvious way that threat to humanity is going to be expressed is through economic damage. In other words, unchecked climate change is going to be terrifically expensive. It drives home the fact that dawdling on climate policy, as Democrats did when they...

The refugee crisis – particularly in the Mediterranean area – has received large amounts of new attention in the past few years, with people fleeing from Syria and entering the European Union emblematic of the problem. There has been some research connecting this refugee problem with changes to the climate. In particular, the years preceding the Syrian refugee crisis were characterized by a severe drought that reduced farm output and led to economic and social strife there. Separating out the influences of climate change from general social instability may be impossible, because they are intimately linked. But we do know...

Litigation may be as American as apple pie, but some lawsuits are so destructive that they stand out even among the hugely expensive wreckage wrought by our legal system. The most prominent current example is the "children's" climate lawsuit (Juliana v U.S.): A group of kids, including "future generations, through their guardian Dr. James Hansen," claim that the government's actions and failures to act have caused climate change, thus violating the youngest generation's constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, and have failed to protect essential public trust resources. I leave the numerous legal issues to the lawyers, although precisely...

You probably think that the classical reference in the title is to a saying originating from baseball humorist Yogi Berra. But Quote Investigator traces the origin of the saying back to an unnamed wag in the Danish parliament in the 1930s. Early users of the phrase included Danish atomic physicist Nils Bohr and movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. As hard as they may be to get right, predictions about the future are the core of the field that goes by the name of "climate science." Because of predictions about the future by climate scientists, everybody knows that human burning of fossil...