Free Republic

Her Majesty's Ship Challenger set sail in 1872. Stripped of her guns and outfitted for science, her mission was to sail around the globe sampling as she went. Among other scientific triumphs, the Challenger gathered the first global set of ocean temperature readings, more than 260 in all. The British expedition measured from the surface to a depth beyond 900 meters. In 2004, a set of drifting buoys began to make similar measurements. There are now more than 3000 of these floats bobbing in the world's seas, collecting oceanographic information. Comparing the data sets, separated by more than a century...

Global Warming Denialism ‘Just Foolishness,’ Scientist Peter Raven Says U.S. prestige falling as world has ‘pretty well given up’ on any American leadership facing climate change. ——- Nature’s Edge Notebook #23 Observation, Analysis, Reflection, New Questions One of the world’s most widely known and respected senior scientists tells ABC News that current denial about the basic daunting realities of manmade global warming is “just foolishness.” He also reports that the rest of the world has now “pretty well given up” on its hope for U.S. leadership in dealing with global climate change. His assessment reinforces our findings at the recent...

The video below is a very creative representation of what the day and night sky on Earth would look like if the earth had rings like Saturn. It is well worth a view.But it puts me in the mind of pondering the delicate balance of life on this earth and, though the artwork in the video is beautiful, I suspect that the presence of rings would dramatically alter life on this earth, perhaps even annihilate it.By way of disclaimer, let me say I am not a geologist or astronomer. But a number of things concern me about the presence of...

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...

This just smacks of the same mentality that inspired climate change activists to say global warming deniers should be purged from meteorology. Kari Mari Norgaard, a professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon, suggests that resistance to the threat of climate change at individual and societal levels must be “recognized and treated” before real action can be taken to effectively address the problem global warming poses. From a University of Oregon press release: “Climate change poses a massive threat to our present social, economic and political order. From a sociological perspective, resistance to change is to...

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.

Climate-change scepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist Dubious on warmo peril? You're the kind who'd own slaves 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. "Over the past ten years I have published and taught in the areas of environmental sociology,...

Coral off Tahiti has linked the collapse of massive ice sheets 14,600 years ago to a dramatic and rapid rise in global sea-levels of around 14 metres. Previous research could not accurately date the sea-level rise but now an Aix-Marseille University-led team, including Oxford University scientists Alex Thomas and Gideon Henderson, has confirmed that the event occurred 14,650-14,310 years ago at the same time as a period of rapid climate change known as the Bølling warming. The finding will help scientists currently modelling future climate change scenarios to factor in the dynamic behaviour of major ice sheets. A report of...

New rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions will make it nearly impossible to build new coal power plants The Obama administration effectively blocked the construction of any new coal-fired power plants on Tuesday, introducing rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the next generation of plants. The proposed new standards would cut carbon dioxide emissions on new power plants in half and will, over time, help move America away from the carbon-heavy plants that currently produce nearly half of the country's electricity, Lisa Jackson, the head of the environmental protection agency, told a conference call with reporters. "Right now there...

Global Sea Ice has returned to above-normal levels.

The world’s scientists are now more than 90% sure that human-caused global warming will increase the length, frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heat waves, the most authoritative scientific report yet on the subject says. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report into extreme weather events found with “high confidence” that climate change has already made heat waves more severe in areas including southern Europe and the Mediterranean. By 2100, the financial cost of extreme weather conditions could be some €15 trillion, mostly borne by what is currently the developing world. The worst affected will be...

The Obama Environmental Protection Agency just condemned to death an entire U.S. industry - a legal and scientific horror story that congressional Republicans failed miserably to prevent. The EPA’s newly proposed greenhouse gas emission standards for coal-fired power plants will be finalized by the Obama administration, win or lose, after the November election. Though the proposed standards leave alone existing coal-fired power plants, they effectively prohibit the construction of new plants by establishing an impossible-to-meet emissions standard. But don’t get the idea that the EPA threw the coal industry a bone by omitting existing coal-fired plants, as the agency has...

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...

You may have seen headlines like this scary one in USA Today: “Experts say global warming is causing stronger hurricanes” What’s the science behind that? Not much, it turns out. In fact, . . .

Continuous global warming, which has lately been the talk of the day, will not happen after all. In the 21st century, warming and cooling will be alternately replacing each other approximately every 40 years, with each subsequent cooling more severe than the previous one. This is proved by changes in the ice situation in the Arctic, Nikolay Dobretsov, Doctor of Geology and Mineralogy, the Chairman of the Earth Science United Academic Council, has told The Voice of Russia. He is convinced that the hypothesis of continuous climate warming on our planet has considerably exhausted itself.

Are you worried about global warming during this unusally mild winter?

Scientists are increasingly confident that the uptick in heat waves and heavier rainfall is linked to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, posing a heightened risk to the world’s population, according to two reports issued in the past week. On Wednesday, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a 594-page study suggesting that when it comes to weather observations since 1950 there has been a “change in some extremes,” which stem in part from global warming. [text excerpted] But the IPCC team projects that there is a 90 to 100 percent probability that sea level rise “will contribute to upward trends...

Readers may recall seeing this article in Physics Today titled Predicting and managing extreme weather events by Jane Lubchenco and Thomas R. Karl I had to laugh when I saw the “managing” part of extreme weather events. I’d love to see Tom Karl try to “manage” an F5. From what I hear, he has enough trouble just managing NCDC.Here’s what Dr. Will Happer had to say in the WSJ:I particularly liked this part:…There has indeed been some warming, perhaps about 0.8 degrees Celsius, since the end of the so-called Little Ice Age in the early 1800s. Some of that warming...

Obama's first big energy-policy speech was to the United Nations in 2009 when he boldly told the entire world that it had to get off of fossil fuels because: "the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing." "Rising sea levels threaten every coastline," blah, blah, blah, but to the true believers, it was lines from a psalm: More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict. All the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution [must] act together. Wind turbines and solar panels and batteries for...

House GOP eyes another possible green-tech scandalBy Neil Munro - The Daily Caller | The Daily Caller – 5 hrs ago GOP leaders are investigating Ecotality Inc., yet another troubled green-tech company that has received taxpayer funds and public support from the White House. The firm has received roughly $126 million from the the Department of Energy to install roughly 14,000 electric car chargers, has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians, and was showcased by President Barack Obama in his 2010 State of the Union speech. But the company has installed less than 7,000 of the chargers, its subsidiary...