Free Republic

As New York’s Department of Energy Conservation (DEC) prepares to issue a report on hydraulic fracturing, DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens finds himself in a precarious position. As former founder of Catskill Mountainkeepers—your run-of-the-mill anti-energy, anti-hydraulic fracturing group—Martens spent most of his days making sure oil and natural gas producers were creating jobs in Pennsylvania, not New York. Hydraulic fracturing is effectively banned in New York State (indefinite moratorium) which means that the Utica Shale play, the natural gas formation that stretches from West Virginia to New York, is off-limits. Were NY’s DEC to issue an objective report about the pros...

Gov. Jerry Brown said today that "humanity is getting dangerously close to the point of no return" on climate change, and he launched a website criticizing conservatives who dispute its significance. The website "Climate Change: Just the Facts," is hosted by Brown's Office of Planning and Research. It devotes one page to "the denialists" and another to rebutting "common denialist arguments." [Snip] "Global warming's impact on Lake Tahoe is well documented. It is just one example of how, after decades of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humanity is getting dangerously close to the point of no return," Brown...

On 9 Aug 2012, the Department of Commerce, for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by way of the National Weather Service, put out a solicitation for a small variety of ammunition. The solicitation breaks down the requirements: 16,000 rounds of ammunition for semiautomatic pistols to be factory-loaded .40 S&W caliber, 180-grain jacketed hollow point (JHP). 6,000 rounds of frangible, 125-grain CFRHT .40 caliber. 24,000 rounds of ammunition for semiautomatic pistols to be factory-loaded .40 S&W caliber, 180-grain jacketed hollow point (JHP). In all, 40,000 rounds of ammunition, and only 500 Transtar II blue 24″ x 40″ targets are being...

In this episode of the Conscience of Kansas radio program I talk about an article by Brian Sussman, author of the book "Climate Gate" about the Big Green environmental push and government mandates. Specifically, we talk about CFL's and a new study that says that CFL's raise the risk of skin cancer.

Hardly anyone knows that two thirds of the warming predicted by the climate models comes from assumed changes in humidity and clouds, and only one third comes directly from the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. Some awareness of the calculations is essential, because there is no direct observational evidence that rising CO2 caused the bulk of the recent warming. If there were, don't you suppose we would have heard all about it by now? The world has spent over $60B since 1990 looking for that evidence. The ice cores shown by Al Gore in his movie were...

Big business sees California's global-warming law as a job killer, a $1 billion tax that could force some of the state's heaviest industries to flee. ..state regulators, trying to ease the burden, are studying whether to give hardship breaks to dozens of companies. ....the state would dole out extra carbon credits – the precious allowances that will give industries the license to emit greenhouse gases starting in January.... could save companies millions of dollars. Like practically everything connected with..the Global Warming Solutions Act, the idea is controversial. ..."We're … concerned about the system being gamed," said Kathryn Phillips, director of...

Hundred-Year Forecast: Drought By CHRISTOPHER R. SCHWALM, CHRISTOPHER A. WILLIAMS and KEVIN SCHAEFER BY many measurements, this summer’s drought is one for the record books. But so was last year’s drought in the South Central states. And it has been only a decade since an extreme five-year drought hit the American West. Widespread annual droughts, once a rare calamity, have become more frequent and are set to become the “new normal.” Until recently, many scientists spoke of climate change mainly as a “threat,” sometime in the future. But it is increasingly clear that we already live in the era of...

Rules for power lines, pipelines and more shown the door More than 100 energy and climate change regulations are to be scrapped or improved in a bid to cut "red tape" for businesses, the government has announced. Energy Minister Charles Hendry said that, following a review, 86 regulations would be dropped completely while a further 48 regimes would be "improved". The full package of reforms, including other initiatives by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), is expected to save businesses around £400m over the next 20 years, he said. The review was part of the government's 'Red Tape...

About one train per hour. ThatÂ’s the target loading rate for the massive silos, conveyors, and hoppers at the North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Wyoming, the most productive coal mine in the world. And on a cool, nearly windless day in late March, Scott Durgin, a regional vice president for Peabody Energy, was happy. Standing in the mineÂ’s dispatch office, Durgin pointed to a flat-panel display showing a list of trains that had recently passed through. It was exactly 12 noon, according to the clock on the wall, and since midnight, the mine had loaded 11 trains, each carrying...

A new study has successfully reconstructed temperature from the deep sea to reveal how global ice volume has varied over the glacial-interglacial cycles of the past 1.5 million years. Scientists have announced a major breakthrough in understanding Earth's climate machine by reconstructing highly accurate records of changes in ice volume and deep-ocean temperatures over the last 1.5 million years. The study, which is reported in the journal Science, offers new insights into a decades-long debate about how the shifts in Earth's orbit relative to the sun have taken Earth into and out of an ice-age climate. Being able to reconstruct...

I decided to do myself something that so far NOAA has refused to do: give a CONUS average temperature for the United States from the new ‘state of the art’ United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). After spending millions of dollars to put in this new network from 2002 to 2008, they are still giving us data from the old one when they report a U.S. national average temperature. As readers may recall, I have demonstrated that old COOP/USHCN network used to monitor U.S. climate is a mishmash of urban, semi-urban, rural, airport and non-airport stations, some of which are...

RANJIT NAGAR, India — When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed a sensible system. Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions. But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity. They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits...

Ray Evans writes a review below of  Robert Manne’s essay in The Monthly entitled A Dark Victory: How vested interests defeated climate science. (Forgive me Ray for slipping in one or two thoughts of my own below).   Ray Evans is the secretary of The Lavoisier Group one of the first original skeptical groups in Australia (I’ve put a few notes on that at the base of the article). It was Graham Readfearns review (ABC Drum) that apparently brought the Manne article to Ray’s attention.Dear All,Readfearn’s review was a lamentation of defeat and disappointment. So I immediately bought a copy of The...

Fellow RantPolitical.com blogger Jenny Craig (if that is her real name) asks the question, “Why Do Conservative Wingbags Hate Wind Energy?� Assuming that she is talking about wind power and not harnessing the flatulence of bovine bowel activity, I’m more than willing to help a fellow ranter out by answering her question. God knows SOMEONE needs to school her.She leaps off of Romney’s recent policy position that he wants to do away with wind energy tax incentives. She believes Romney (and by association every member of the GOP) are suddenly disconnected from scientific and economic reality for the following reasons:...

Scientists Agree the Problem Is Real, and the Time to Act Is Now Time to Close the Dirty Relic, Reid-Gardner Coal PlantLas Vegas, Nevada–Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke today at the National Clean Energy Summit 5.0: The Power of Choice. Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery: Good morning, and welcome to the National Clean Energy Summit: The Power of Choice. I am pleased to once again host this important event with the support of the Center for American Progress, the Clean Energy Project, the MGM Resorts International and the UNLV.   Over the last four years, this summit...

Nicola Scafetta sent me this paper yesterday, and I read it with interest, but I have a number of reservations about it, not the least of which is that it is partially based on the work of Landscheidt and the whole barycentric thing which gets certain people into shouting matches. Figure 9 looks to be interesting, but note that it is in generic units, not temperature, so has no predictive value by itself.Fig. 9. Proposed solar harmonic reconstructions based on four beat frequencies. (Top) Average beat envelope function of the model (Eq. (18)) and (Bottom) the version modulated with a...

The United States reaffirmed support for a U.N. goal of limiting global warming after criticism from the European Union and small island states that Washington seemed to be backing away. "The U.S. continues to support this goal. We have not changed our policy," U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said in a statement on Wednesday. Almost 200 nations, including the United States, have agreed to limit rising temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times to avoid dangerous changes such as floods, droughts and rising sea levels.

CARSON CITY – With U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's 5th annual National Clean Energy Summit set to kick off today in Las Vegas, the debate over alternative energy development and the government's role in its future rages on. The purpose of the day-long event as described on the website is to, “once again bring together clean energy visionaries and leaders, public officials, business executives and entrepreneurs, investors, students, and the media to discuss how to empower the public with tools to promote the clean energy economy; increasing jobs and our energy independence.” But the role of the federal government in the...

Full Title:**********************$1.3 billion in ‘clean energy’ subsidies produce 288 permanent jobs, quadruple cost of electricity in Nevada Reid-sponsored National Clean Energy Summit pushes more subsidies as key to Nevada’s futureLAS VEGAS — As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prepares to host his fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit on Aug. 7, a Nevada Journal examination of Nevada’s renewable energy sector shows that over $1.3 billion in federal funds funneled into geothermal, solar and wind projects since 2009 has yielded and is projected to yield just 288 permanent, full-time jobs. That’s an initial cost of over $4.6 million per job.Despite...

From NASA:  Research Links Extreme Summer Heat Events to Global WarmingA new statistical analysis by NASA scientists has found that Earth’s land areas have become much more likely to experience an extreme summer heat wave than they were in the middle of the 20th century. The research was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Earth’s Northern Hemisphere over the past 30 years has seen more “hot” (orange), “very hot” (red) and “extremely hot” (brown) summers, compared to a base period defined in this study from 1951 to 1980. This visualization shows how the area...

Uh oh.Steve McIntyre has written an eviscerating essay about a secret letter circulated by the IPCC to UEA/CRU, which they are refusing to divulge, because: there would be an adverse effect on international relations between IPCC WG1 and academic institutions within the United Kingdom because it would force is to reconsider our working arrangements with those experts who have been selected for an active role in WG1 AR5 from your institution and others in the UK”. McIntyre writes: On Feb 26, 2010, as part of their first response to Climategate, Thomas Stocker, a Climategate correspondent of Phil Jones and by...

The mainstream media is celebrating a physicist who allegedly did a U-turn on his global warming views and now says humans are the cause. Except Richard Muller had already said in 2008 that man was a cause of global warming. Nonetheless, the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, reported July 31: “The hot issue of global warming got hotter Monday when a UC Berkeley physicist, once a loud skeptic of human-caused climate change, agreed not only that the Earth is heating up, but also that people are the cause of it all.” Never mind that in an interview almost four years...

Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations, and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide. The groups, already instrumental in influencing Obama’s first term defense agenda, call for massive, second term slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change. These schemes and many more are documented in the soon-to-be-released book, Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans...

Al Armendariz's big mouth cost him his job as a regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Now that he's working for the Sierra Club, Armendariz appears even more opinionated about the industry he once regulated.In his first comments since resigning from EPA in April, Armendariz unloaded on the coal industry, called President Obama the most environmental president ever, and attacked the state of Texas for fighting the EPA in court. He also addressed the controversy surrounding his comments comparing the EPA's philosophy to the brutal tactics used by the ancient Roman army to intimidate its adversaries.Armendariz's most pointed comments...

The president vowed to make climate change a top priority in his second term, suggesting that a major assault on industry is coming if he is re-elected. So before the potential onslaught, some real-world perspective on climate change is essential. First, note that the tool used to both develop future global climate scenarios and to panic the public on meteorological mayhem is atmospheric modeling. Most of my nearly 35 years of professional life has been involved with atmospheric modeling in one... --snip-- What I and so many other air modelers have discovered is that, as impressive as modeling has become,...

RUSSIAN television contacted me last night asking me to go on a program about the race for Arctic resources. The ice is melting fast, and it was all the usual stuff about how there will be big strategic conflicts over the seabed resources – especially oil and gas – that become accessible when it’s gone. The media always love conflict, and now that the Cold War is long gone, there’s no other potential military confrontation between the great powers to worry about. Governments around the Arctic Ocean are beefing up their armed forces for the coming struggle, so where are...

Kerry: Climate Change ‘As Dangerous’ as Iran’s Nukes and Possibility of War By Patrick Goodenough August 2, 2012 (CNSNews.com) – The situation facing the planet because of climate change is “as dangerous” as the possibility of war over Iran’s nuclear activities, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) told the U.S. Senate on Wednesday. Delivering what his office described as “a major address and current assessment of the global climate change challenge,” Kerry acknowledged and bemoaned the success of those who question the notion of human-induced global warming. He compared skeptics to flat-earthers and decried what he called a “concerted assault on reason.”...

If Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall have their way, rain will go away come again some other day of their choosing. Both Hutchison and Udall have introduced unsuccessful bills in the past that would have created national boards to oversee and fund research into weather modification. That is, artificially changing or controlling the weather. “I … am very supportive of and concerned about weather prediction and modification,” Hutchison said at an appropriations hearing in 2011. “And I think we need to know more basic science, and we also need to — to use...

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that variations in the long-term reversal rate of the Earth's magnetic field may be caused by changes in heat flow from the Earth's core into the base of the overlying mantle. The Earth is made up of a solid inner core, surrounded by a liquid outer core, in turn covered by a thicker or more viscous mantle, and ultimately by the solid crust beneath our feet.

Climate change has come to New Jersey, according to Environment New Jersey, a statewide environmental advocacy group. The organization released a report Thursday that attributes this year’s extreme weather to global warming. “Certainly, we have a problem on our hands,” said Matt Elliott, a representative from Environment New Jersey. “We need to do everything we can to cut carbon pollution today.”

California's landmark global-warming bill was a white-hot topic in the 2010 governor's race and remains former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature environmental achievement. But as the state prepares to unroll the law's cap-and-trade program in November with the first state auctions of emissions permits, a new poll finds that 57 percent of Californians say they have never heard anything about the program. The statewide poll by the Public Policy Institute of California further found that 30 percent of respondents said they had heard "a little," while just 12 percent said they had heard "a lot." "Cap-and-trade is a very complicated issue...

President Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them. With suburban voters set to be the swing constituency of the 2012 election, the administration’s plans for this segment of the electorate deserve scrutiny. Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,� the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation. To this end, the president has already put programs in place designed to push the country toward a sweeping social transformation in a possible second term. The goal: income equalization via a massive redistribution...

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Anthony Watts On Wednesday at 10AM ET (7AM PT) the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will conduct a hearing on (take your pick) global warming climate change climate disruption. Dr. John Christy will be there, but it is confirmed that Dr. Richard Muller of BEST will NOT be testifying.  From what I hear it will be webcast, details below.It is called: “Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.” You can watch the webcast at http://www.epw.senate.govFull Committee hearing:Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.Wednesday, August 1,...

Aug 1 (Reuters Point Carbon) - In an effort to dissuade companies in key industries facing new carbon costs from leaving the state, California is considering giving them millions of dollars worth of additional free greenhouse gas allowances, state's air regulator said on Monday. California's cap-and-trade program seeks to emulate tactics used in the European Union and Australia to address emission "leakage" - a term describing the exodus of employers from a state or country in order to sidestep environmental costs. The California Air Resources Board (ARB), the regulator of the forthcoming program, held a workshop in Sacramento on Monday...

VANITY: I blocked that horrendous tripe called "Current Channel" from my Direct TV Satellite service.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's electricity sector is more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, as higher temperatures will impede the state's ability to generate and transmit power while demand for air conditioning rises, a report said Tuesday. The data is part of the latest report released by the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Energy Commission, which are trying to help state and local leaders prepare for life in the hotter, drier California of the future. (Report: http://r.reuters.com/zag79s) Wildlife, agriculture and coastal communities are also at serious risk from climate change, the report said. Sea levels could...

Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second-term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide. The groups, already instrumental in influencing Obama’s first-term defense agenda, call for massive, second-term slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change. The schemes, and many more, are documented in the soon-to-be-released book “Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next...

From the Harvard University  news service and the what are they smoking department, comes this suggestion that apparently it never was ozone damaging CFC refrigerants at all, it was those nasty thunderstorms wot done it.  They say: “Recent studies have suggested that the number and intensity of such storms are linked to climate changes…which could in turn lead to increased ozone loss and greater levels of harmful UV radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, and potentially higher rates of skin cancer.” I have a pretty hard time believing this one, because, well, it’s like Rube Goldberg machine construct where lots of...

Billions of years ago, before Earth's atmosphere had oxygen, it periodically possessed a "haze" of organic chemicals including methane, boffins have discovered. During these periods the planet's air was more like that of Titan, ice moon of Saturn, than the stuff we breathe today. "Models have previously suggested that the Earth's early atmosphere could have been warmed by a layer of organic haze," says Dr Aubrey Zerkle of Newcastle uni. "Our geochemical analyses of marine sediments from this time period provide the first evidence for such an atmosphere." According to Zerkle and his colleagues, during the period 2.5 to 2.65...

WASHINGTON – The verdict is in: Global warming is occurring and emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activity are the main cause. This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project..... ....Benjamin D. Santer, a climate researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a lead author of the 1995 U.N. climate report, said he welcomed the involvement of another research group into “detection and attribution” of climate change and its causes. But he also said he found it troubling that Muller claimed such definitive...

Plant owners and operators report to EIA that they expect to retire almost 27 gigawatts (GW) of capacity from 175 coal-fired generators between 2012 and 2016. In 2011, there were 1,387 coal-fired generators in the United States, totaling almost 318 GW. The 27 GW of retiring capacity amounts to 8.5% of total 2011 coal-fired capacity. The coal-fired capacity expected to be retired over the next five years is more than four times greater than retirements performed during the preceding five-year period (6.5 GW). Moreover, based on EIA data, the approximate 9 GW of coal-fired capacity retirements expected to occur in...

It’s all up on Watts Up now. What Anthony Watts and Evan Jones have revealed is breathtaking, a must see. Half of the warming trend has gone. 92% of the artificial rise was due to” erroneous adjustments of well sited stations”. Muller et al used an older siting classification system. The new classification system shows that siting does have a major impact on the data.We always knew thermometers were never meant to be stuck next to air-conditioners. Now we know they shouldn’t be recording global warming near airports either.Go and Visit Watts Up and enjoy! I’ll be posting my own analysis...

Houston - Although it's ending on a warm note, July sure was lovely. The region received lots of drought-quenching rain and average temperatures were a couple of degrees cooler than normal. [SNIP] But are we in for déjà vu all over again, with regard to the torrid August 2011, during the month ahead? Houston suffered through August last year with a record-shattering daily high average of 102 degrees. Probably not, says Chris Hebert, a forecaster with Houston-based ImpactWeather. Hebert noted that a large area of high pressure has been centered for much of the summer over parts of the Midwest....

Have a look at this chart. It tells you pretty much all you need to know about the much-anticipated scoop by Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That? What it means, in a nutshell, is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the US government body in charge of America's temperature record, has systematically exaggerated the extent of late 20th century global warming. In fact, it has doubled it.

PRESS RELEASE Posted on July 29, 2012 by Anthony Watts PRESS RELEASE – July 29th, 2012 12PM PDT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEA reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated...

The agency has already approved 17 large-scale solar energy projects on public lands that are expected to produce nearly 6,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 1.8 million homes. The department estimated the resource potential of the newly identified development zones at 23,700 megawatts, enough to power seven million homes, by 2030. Wow! 23,700 megawatts! That’s a lot of megawatts! Right? No. It’s not… If all 285,000 acres were covered with solar PV arrays, the “Hot Spots” could have a generating capacity of about 40,000 MW at a cost of about $252 billion.If the same 285,000 acres were covered...

MEMORANDUM THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON September 17, 1969 FOR JOHN EHRLICHMAN As with so many of the more interesting environmental questions, we really don't have very satisfactory measurements of the carbon dioxide problem. On the other hand, this very clearly is a problem, and, perhaps most particularly, is one that can seize the imagination of persons normally indifferent to projects of apocalyptic change. The process is a simple one. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the effect of a pane of glass in a greenhouse. The C02 content is normally in a stable cycle, but recently man has begun to...

The Obama Deception is a hard-hitting film that completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests of the American people. The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery. We have reached a critical juncture in the New World Order's plans. It's not about Left or Right: it's about a One World Government. The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves...

Strong summer thunderstorms that pump water high into the upper atmosphere pose a threat to the protective ozone layer over the United States, researchers said on Thursday, drawing one of the first links between climate change and ozone loss over populated areas. In a study published online by the journal Science, Harvard University scientists reported that some storms send water vapor miles into the stratosphere — which is normally drier than a desert — and showed how such events could rapidly set off ozone-destroying reactions with chemicals that remain in the atmosphere from CFCs, refrigerant gases that are now banned....

Since Dr Michael Mann announced his intention to sue over my Corner post, I've had a few queries on this and that aspect of the case: 1) Several readers have asked if there's a legal defense fund to which they can contribute. No, but, if you want to help out, you could always send a few bucks National Review's way. Since Dr Mann's lawyer, John "I don't bluff" Williams, has assured us he doesn't bluff, it seems prudent to budget for a full-length trial.You can donate to NR here. Or better yet, subscribe to the magazine, and enjoy a fortnightly...