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Fifty-five million years ago, the world was a much warmer place. The poles were ice-free year-round. Palm trees grew in Alaska. Forests stretched right into the Arctic Circle. There, swamps like those in today’s southeastern United States hosted alligators, snakes, and giant tortoises. Scientists call this time in Earth’s history the Eocene, the dawn of the age of mammals. And climatologists have naturally taken a keen interest in how it began. They know that a dramatic spike in carbon dioxide associated with rapid climate change kicked off the epoch – called the “Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum” (PETM). But what scientists don’t...

Strong signs that the Obama administration is close to declaring that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are dangerous pollutants are prompting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to request the EPA conduct a public hearing on the scientific evidence underpinning the belief that rising temperatures threaten public health and welfare. Last week, the powerful business lobby filed a request that the agency provide a venue to rebut "largely undocumented and, in the chamber's view, insupportable claims" about the effects of climate change. Chamber officials said they are concerned that any rules capping greenhouse gas emissions could be unduly influenced by...

Temperature Record One central problem for those who promote the idea of man made global warming is the earth's temperature record - on almost all time scales. In the last decade, there has been no clear warming trend (as the UK Met Office and IPCC's own figures demonstrate). In the last century, much of the warming occurred prior to 1940, when human emissions of CO2 were relatively small compared to today. During the post-war economic boom (when one would have expected the temperature to rise) the world cooled, from the 1940s till the mid-70s (again, this is evident from accepted...

The nation's largest business lobby wants to put the science of global warming on trial. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect. "It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for...

Longer term Solar Minimum could lead to Little Ice Age __________________  15 Aug 09 – “Many scientists are believing that a Dalton-like solar minimum appears a real possibility given the recent solar behavior,” says this article on Icecap.** “Even David Hathaway of NASA has recently conceded that ‘possibility’ to the New York Times.” “In EOS* of 28 July 2009 there is a very well written feature-length article by astronomer Emeritus Dr. William Livingston and Associate Astronomer Dr Matthew Penn entitled ”Are Sunspots Different During This Sunspot Minimum?” Livingston and Penn answer yes. Their central finding is that regardless of...

It’s likely a sign of desperation that national security is increasingly invoked as an excuse for waging war on global warming. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., says global warming will create “climate refugees” and bring international conflicts. The American military, the reasoning goes, will have to intervene in massive humanitarian efforts or with force. This echoes President Barack Obama’s depiction last year of global warming as an alleged “national security” threat. A Defense Department think tank now predicts changing climate will create international instability. Retired Army Gen. Anthony Zinni warns we must pay now to avert global warming, or pay later...

Al Gore buys them. So do the Grateful Dead, Hollywood celebrities and, increasingly, many climate-conscious executives and consumers. For those who travel the world by air but don't want to contribute to global warming in the process, compensating with so-called carbon offsets has become a fashionable solution. The sale of these credits for environmentally friendly activities, investments in everything from wind energy to carbon stored in forests, jumped from $97 million in 2006 to $331 million worldwide in 2007 – about a quarter of it in the United States. But one global green leader does not offset its travel, even...

The idea of using ‘geo-engineering’ projects to tackle climate change is not new, but amongst the various proposals to either reduce sunlight levels or take CO2 out of the air by man-made means, one in particular is gaining increasing support from the scientific community. A study by the think-tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Centre has suggested that the idea of autonomous cloud-making ships could be a cost-effective way of cancelling out the effect of man-made CO2 emissions. Dr Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University promoted the idea last year and the Royal Society is expected to voice its support next month. The...

More than 60 prominent German scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made global warming fears in an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The more than 60 signers of the letter include several United Nations IPCC scientists. The scientists declared that global warming has become a “pseudo religion” and they noted that rising CO2 has “had no measurable effect” on temperatures. The German scientists, also wrote that the “UN IPCC has lost its scientific credibility.” This latest development comes on the heels of a series of inconvenient developments for the promoters of man-made global warming fears, including new...

DES MOINES -- This has been an unusually mild year in Tornado Alley, which is good news, of course, for the people who live here, but a little frustrating to scientists who planned to chase twisters as part of a $10 million research project. “You’re out there to do the experiment and you’re geared up every day and ready. And when there isn’t anything happening, that is frustrating,” said Don Burgess, a scientist at the University of Oklahoma. But he was quick to add that he is pleased the relative quiet has meant fewer injuries and less damage. Nationwide, there...

That the press in general is sympathetic to the tenets of global warming and environmental alarmism in general is nearly beyond dispute. But Reuters, the wire service that U.S. news outlets heavily rely on for international news, has taken its environmental bias further and has crossed the line into open advocacy. Consider a few graphics I captured at various Reuters reports during the past week. (GRAPHICS at link)...

Ian Plimer has outraged the ayatollahs of purist environmentalism, the Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming, and he seems to relish the damnation they heap on him. Plimer is a geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, and he may well be Australia's best-known and most notorious academic. Plimer, you see, is an unremitting critic of "anthropogenic global warming" -- man-made climate change to you and me -- and the current environmental orthodoxy that if we change our polluting ways, global warming can be reversed. It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying...

The Science and Public Policy Institute announces the publication of Climate Money, a study by Joanne Nova revealing that the federal Government has a near-monopsony on climate science funding. This distorts the science towards self-serving alarmism. Key findings: Ø The US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Most of this spending was unnecessary. Ø Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of...

(snip) ...there is a national security interest in energy, and it will behoove us to eliminate our current practice of handing over our energy security and hard-earned money to dictators and thugs worldwide for oil and gas. Most of us in the real world, however, see that the alternative does not have to destroy our economy further, as the ill-advised American Clean Energy and Security Act would do. The United States has the largest reserves of oil, gas and coal in the world, and more expertise in creating clean energy out of those fuels than any other country. We could...

As cap-and-trade advocates tie their knickers in knots over so-called "global warming," Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. Earth's temperatures continue a chill that began 11 years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global-warmists kick, scream and push their pet theory – just like little kids who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Consider how the globe cooled last month: • June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal – the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service stated July 1:...

A new study published in the Journal of Nature Geoscience may have figured out why global temperatures keep falling much to the chagrin of the "Church of Global Warming Moonbats." Their entire model was all wrong. According to the Article: We conclude that in addition to direct CO2 forcing, other processes and/or feedbacks that are hitherto unknown must have caused a substantial portion of the warming during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. Once these processes have been identified, their potential effect on future climate change needs to be taken into account. In English, it is saying that around 55 Million years...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A dramatic warming of the planet 55 million years ago cannot be solely explained by a surge in carbon dioxide levels, a study shows, highlighting gaps in scientists' understanding of impacts from rapid climate change. During an event called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, global temperatures rose between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius within several thousand years. The world at that time was already warmer than now with no surface ice. "We now believe that the CO2 did not cause all the warming, that there were additional factors," said Richard Zeebe, an oceanographer with the University of Hawaii...

In a stunning rebuke of the Obama administration, NASA's James Hansen, one of the world's foremost climate alarmists, called the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the anti-global warming bill that recently passed the House, "less than worthless." Not only that, he referred to it as a "counterfeit climate bill" that employs a "Ponzi-like 'cap-and-trade' scheme" setting the nation on a "disaster course" as a result of the 219 members of Congress he accused of voting for it without reading it. As you might have already deduced, Hansen's complaint is that the bill doesn't go far enough to solve what...

G8 set new global warming targets Advertisement Italian foreign ministry spokesman Maurizio Massari talks about his expectations Leaders of the G8 leading industrial countries have agreed to try to limit global warming to just 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels by 2050.The summit, in the earthquake-hit Italian city of L'Aquila, also agreed tough new carbon emissions cuts. It says developed nations should cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, with the rest of the world making a 50% reduction by the same date. Analysts say there is no indication of how the targets, or costs, will be met. The summit agenda...

UAH Global Temperature Anomaly for June 09 ~ ZERO There was a lot of speculation last year that our global temperature would recover (increase) from the huge drops last spring. While there has been some recovery, the overall global temperature trend since 1999 has been the subject of much debate. What is not debatable is that the current global temperature anomaly, as determined by a leading authority on global satellite temperature measurements, says we have no departure from “normal” this month. Given the U.S. Senate is about to vote upon the most complex and costly plan to regulate greenhouse gases,...

WHEELING - He is not yet back to work in the Senate chamber, but U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd is opposing "cap and trade" legislation pushed by the Obama administration. The 91-year-old Byrd, D-W.Va., was released from an unidentified Washington, D.C. hospital last week after a month-long stay for a staph infection. He expects to return to the chamber before the Senate begins debate on "cap and trade" - which is tentatively set for this fall, according to Byrd's office. "I cannot support the House bill in its present form," Byrd said in a statement. "I continue to believe that clean...

“Combative Start to Senate Climate Hearings” – “Climate Fight: The Senate Tackles Global Warming Bill” – “Dem: Long Battle Ahead of Us” – “Senators Draw Battle Lines on Cap-and-Trade” News Round-Up: EPW Kicks Off Latest Global Warming Debate    Watch: Democrat Senator: "Long Battle Ahead of Us" on Global Warming Bill  Link Bond: The American People Deserve Answers on the Costs of Democrats’ Cap and Trade Bill to Family Budgets, Lost Jobs, Press Release, July 07, 2009: U.S. Senator Kit Bond today called on Democrats to tell the American people the truth about the cost of their cap and trade legislation to...

Here is video of Sen. James Inhoufe talking about his plans to question EPA officials today about an EPA report done by a longtime employee which calls into question the entire basis for Global Warming hysteria. The report was suppressed by the EPA, becoming public knowledge only after the House of Representatives had already passed the Cap and Trade bill based on the assumption that the world is in peril because of Global Warming. The suppressed report finds no basis for believing the earth is warming. In fact it says it has indeed been cooling. Inhoufe is calling for an...

An international group of academics is urging world leaders to abandon their current policies on climate change.Policies are failing to decarbonise economies, the report says The authors of How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course say the strategy based on overall emissions cuts has failed and will continue to fail. They want G8 nations and emerging economies to focus on an approach based on improving energy efficiency and decarbonising energy supply. Critics of the report's recommendations say they are a dangerous diversion. The report is published by the London School of Economics' (LSE) Mackinder Programme and the University of...

THERE IS NO EVIDENCE Let's break down the case for human cause global warming logically: 1) There's plenty of evidence that global warming has been occurring recently. 2)There is ample evidence that carbon emissions cause warming and that the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing. 3) There is no evidence that carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of the recent global warming. The alarmists focus you entirely on the first two points, to distract you from the third. The public is increasingly aware of the misdirection.

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming. The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined. "He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a global...

Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst's report questioning the science behind global warming. A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming. The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined."He came out...

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation. If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

The House of Representatives will vote Friday(Today) on the so-called “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” -- a.k.a the “Waxman-Markey” global warming bill. But whatever you want to call this legislative atrocity, if enacted into law, it will go down in history as the death knell of the American standard of living and way of life. If you hate America, this bill is for you. After decades of fierce battling between rabid greens -- that is, left-wingers masquerading as “environmentalists” -- and the global warming skeptics, few Americans seem to have bought into the bill’s premise ­ that...

It appears that years of debate about climate change and energy may now come down to a vote on an actual bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES). As I write this, the vote is scheduled for Friday. If it occurs, you will be asked to vote to implement carbon rationing in the United States.   Without regard to party or ideology, I believe that the evidence is clear that this law would be contrary to the public interest. Here is why, in a nutshell: 1.  It would be a terrible deal for American taxpayers. According to the...

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their analysis of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that had proponents of the bill claiming Americans could save the planet for just $175 per household. That was the figure CBO estimated cap and trade would cost households in 2020 alone.[1]Both the CBO's analysis and the subsequent legislation are troubled: The analysis grossly underestimates economic costs while the legislation will have virtually no impact on climate. Overall, there are a number of basic problems with CBO's analysis: Their allowance cost numbers do not add up; They ignore economic costs such as the decrease...

WASHINGTON – America’s third largest party urged the U.S. House Tuesday to defeat plans for a $1.9 trillion energy tax hike over eight years. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is attempting to rush H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill, to a vote this week. “With unemployment rising above and beyond what President Obama said it would be with the multi-hundred billion dollar stimulus bill, now is not the time to dismantle our economy with a multi-hundred billion dollar energy tax hike,” said William Redpath, Libertarian National Committee Chairman. “Libertarians urge House members to defeat this job-killing tax hike on Americans,”...

ABSTRACT: Democratic leaders in the House have scheduled a Friday vote on a climate change bill that would establish a complex cap-and-trade system to limit the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, a priority for President Obama. The House Rules Committee unveiled the latest version of the bill, which weighs in at 1,201 pages. It features new items such as $7.5 billion in "green bonds" for a new federal financing agency called the Clean Energy Deployment Administration, extra emission allowances for politically powerful rural electric cooperatives, greater flexibility for states that want to use free allowances for mass transit, and tweaks benefiting...

Is an imperfect climate bill (Waxman-Markey) better than no bill at all? Al Gore says yes.To bring environment supporters together, Gore will host a nationwide conference call on June 23 at 8 p.m. ET. The purpose, according to his Repower America e-mail sent to a selected audience, is “to build urgency around this bill and make sure it passes. We have to go to the grassroots – we have to continue building support in communities across the nation.”“As this climate legislation moves before the full Congress this summer, we have an opportunity unlike anything we’ve seen yet,” the e-mail concludes.Gore...

Revelle was a powerful man, a noteworthy scientist and a significant force in San Diego in the 1950s. There is no doubt he is largely responsible for the respect given Scripps Institute of Oceanography and for locating the University of California at San Diego, UCSD, in La Jolla. While serving as Director of Scripps, Revelle and one of his researchers wrote the first modern scientific paper that linked carbon dioxide released into the air from the burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect and the warming of temperatures. This triggered an avalanche of research that eventually became the impetus...

The Amazing Story Behind The Global Warming Scam By John Coleman (Founder of the Weather Channel) January 28, 2009 The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rising sea levels, sweltering temperatures, deeper droughts, and heavier downpours — global warming's serious effects are already here and getting worse, the Obama administration warned on Tuesday in the grimmest, most urgent language on climate change ever to come out of any White House. But amid the warnings, scientists and government officials seemed to go out of their way to soften the message. It is still not too late to prevent some of the worst consequences, they said, by acting aggressively to reduce world emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels....

31,478 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs Ron Paul: Global Warming Petition Signed by 31,478 Scientists Statement before the US House of Representatives, June 4, 2009 Madam Speaker, before voting on the "cap-and-trade'' legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists: "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology,...

A row between the fast food giant Burger King and one of its major franchise owners has erupted over roadside signs proclaiming "global warming is baloney". The franchisee, a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, has described Burger King as acting "kinda like cockroaches" over the controversy. MIC says it does not believe Burger King has the authority to make it take the signs down. The dispute began to sizzle last week, when a local newspaper reporter in Memphis, Tennessee, noticed the signs outside two restaurants...

Robert Calahan at NASA’s Goddard Space Center could be in big trouble -- for telling the truth. Here is a headline for an article in the Daily Tech: "NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming" Here are some excerpts from the piece: A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial...

Wednesday, June 03, 2009By Marc Morano – Climate Depot [ Update: 8:44 AM ET: Talking Points Memo (TPM) has removed the article from their website. "The file you are looking for has not been found" - But the url with a portion of the chilling message lingers as evidence: "at-what-point-do-we-jail-or-ex..." - http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/crazedandconfused/2009/06/at-what-point-do-we-jail-or-ex.php?ref=reccafe - Climate Depot has also saved a screen shot of the orginal article.] A public appeal has been issued by an influential U.S. website asking: “At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers.” The appeal appeared on Talking Points Memo, an often cited website that...

NASA finally mentions the Maunder Minimum in its discussion of the current prolonged solar minimum, but it STILL does not mention that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the onset of the Little Ice Age, or that the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s was also cold, as was the unnamed fin-de-the-1800’s minimum. Thar she blows, the Maunder Minimum of sunspot activity: As it has done for two years now, NASA is predicting that solar cycle 24 will ramp up tomorrow. Should that broken-clock prediction hits its hour, then NASA is also predicting that solar cycle 24 will have the modest...

The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations. During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found. We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning...

Every eleven or so years, the sun becomes very quiet. The sunspots that mark an active sun all but disappear. Sunspots eventually return, and after several years the sunspot activity reaches a maximum. Sometimes storms on the active sun play havoc with radio communications and alter satellite orbits. The quiet-active phases of the sun form what is called the solar cycle. We are now experiencing the lull in solar activity between two solar cycles, and it's one of the quietest in decades. In fact, there have been more days without sunspots during the past few years than in almost a...

SOLAR SCIENCENew Solar Cycle Predictions This plot of sunspot numbers shows the measured peak of the last solar cycle (Solar Cycle 23) in blue and the predicted peak of the next solar cycle (24) in red. Credit: NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center. by Tony Phillips Boulder CO (SPX) May 28, 2009 An international panel of experts has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle, stating that Solar Cycle 24 will peak in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots. Led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and sponsored by NASA, the panel includes a dozen members...

Classifying CO2 as a dangerous pollutant makes about as much sense as asking people not to exhale!In April, Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (full disclosure: I worked for EPA in the late 1980's and early 1990's) signed a finding which declares that "greenhouse gases pose a threat to the health and welfare of current and future generations of Americans." It's one of many steps to advance the political agenda of the global warming movement by giving the federal government more power to regulate and tax CO2 emissions in the lives of every day Americans by...

A memo released Tuesday shows an agency within the Obama administration objected to a landmark Environmental Protection Agency ruling on global warming, arguing that it was not based on sound science and could prove costly to businesses. The dispute concerns the EPA's so-called "endangerment finding," in which the agency has tentatively found carbon dioxide is dangerous enough as a greenhouse gas to warrant regulation under the Clean Air Act - a ruling that could force federal action to address climate change even if Congress fails to act. Critics, including some within the administration, argue that the Clean Air Act is...

GE's Jeff Immelt: Global Warming 'Compelling'; Cap-and-Trade Most 'Effective' Way to GoCEO of parent company of NBC Universal argues for carbon price to create 'certainty.' By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute5/20/2009 3:03:44 PM General Electric (NYSE:GE) is the parent company of the major media conglomerate NBC Universal, which owns media outlets NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. At times that has led to the lines between corporate advocacy and journalism being blurred.  That was certainly the case when GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” May 20 to discuss the White House meeting of President Barack Obama’s 16-member...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Supporters of nuclear power in the United States failed to win new breaks for the industry when a U.S. congressional panel on Wednesday voted down an amendment to a controversial climate change bill. Waxman argued that the bill was not discriminating against nuclear power, but that nuclear was not renewable energy because it requires uranium, a limited resource. Also, he said the renewable standard was aimed at promoting new power sources and technology. Republicans have blasted the legislation, warning that it could drastically curb the United States' economic growth by making U.S. companies less competitive internationally with...

Derivatives we can live withWASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- President Barack Obama this week announced accelerated targets on auto emissions, and Rep. Henry Waxman, with full backing from the White House, is rushing to meet his self-imposed deadline to get a cap-and-trade bill out of committee by the end of the week.Waxman, an energetic Democrat from California, fought hard to become chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, unseating Michigan's John Dingell from the position, and now clearly wants to make some history with a bill bearing his name to cap emissions of greenhouse gases. And he doesn't really want to...