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The rise in sea level since the last ice age has prevented us from feeling the full impact of man-made global warming. The sea level rise has resulted in more harmful greenhouse gases being absorbed by the seas. So argue Bangor University scientists in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters (23/12/08), an influential US scientific journal publishing scientific advances that are likely to have immediate influence on the research of other investigators. Over the last 22,000 years, since the last ice age, global sea level has risen by 130 m. Research by Bangor scientists Tom Rippeth and James Scourse...

The evolutionary history of diatoms -- abundant oceanic plankton that remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year -- needs to be rewritten, according to a new Cornell study. The findings suggest that after a sudden rise in species numbers, diatoms abruptly declined about 33 million years ago -- trends that coincided with severe global cooling. The study is published in the Jan. 8 issue of the journal Nature. The research casts doubt on the long-held theory that diatoms' success was tied to an influx of nutrients into the oceans from the rise of grasslands about...

A meteorite impact off Long Island 2,300 years ago may have set off a huge tsunami that flooded the New York City region, a new study says (New York City and Long Island map). It's not known whether any ancient settlements were in the path of the proposed killer waves, but "any significant tsunami today would be devastating and likely to flood places like lower Manhattan," Vanderbilt University geologist Steven Goodbred said. Tsunamis are typically triggered by seismic events. An undersea earthquake, for example, caused the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. But meteorite strikes have also been known to spark...

First an explosion as powerful as thousands of megatons of TNT rained meteorites down on North America. Then forest fires broke out across the continent, sending up a thick layer of soot and dust that blocked out the sun. A sudden ice age ensued, and some of the Earth's largest animals went extinct in a blink of geological time. It's well known that a meteorite colliding with Earth is considered the most likely reason dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago. Now a team of scientists says it has found new evidence that a comet triggered a similar extinction much...

Environmental advocates, wildlife officials, and land trusts charged with protecting the natural world are beginning to take a new approach to climate change: rather than focus only on stopping it, they are also thinking about how to adapt to what's coming. That may mean accepting that certain northern species - such as moose or loon - may not be part of Massachusetts' future ecology. More immediately, it means restoring bogs that could help prevent flooding, or serve as a fallback position for wildlife if sea levels rise - and tearing down dams to give fish access to cooler waters. Both...

Boston is striving to become a leader in green building. But glass siding and atriums, common features of green architecture, carry an unintended side-effect: a mortal danger to birds.

Poor nations to get funds to fight climate change Negotiators at a U.N. climate conference broke through red tape and freed up millions of dollars Friday to help poor countries adapt to increasingly severe droughts, floods and other effects of global warming. "This could be the one thing to come out of Poznan," said Kit Vaughan of WWF-Britain. The decision in the final hours of the two-week conference could begin to release some $60 million (euro45 million) within months, according to delegates and environmentalists following the closed-door talks. "This is an important step," said delegate Mozaharul Alam of Bangladesh.

U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims Scientists Continue to Debunk “Consensus” in 2008 Link to Full Printable PDF Report INTRODUCTION: Over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernemntal Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. This new 231-page U.S. Senate Minority Report report -- updated from 2007’s groundbreaking report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming “consensus” -- features the skeptical voices of over 650 prominent international scientists, including many...

ABSTRACT: Just as the U.S. gets a new President who promises to reverse years of climate change neglect, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore at his side, American environmental experts worry that Europe's resolve on climate change is substantially weakening. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone out of her way to show herself as a climate saviour. But those times are over. Now, with heads of state and government from the European Union gathering in Brussels at the end of the week to approve the bloc's climate goals, Merkel has begun singing a different tune. She said that she...

Hostile Green Takeover: The Auto Industry Faces Environmental Thuggery Senate Floor Speech - November 20, 2008   Contacts: Matt Dempsey 202-224-9797Elizabeth French 202-224-8260 November 20, 2008 Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) – Ranking Member, Environment and Public Works Committee:   Mr. President, Americans are once again being asked to foot the bill for yet another “urgent” bailout.  In October, Congress voted for an unprecedented $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and now much of the same alarmist rhetoric is being employed to pressure members to act quickly.    The latest bailout demand making the rounds in Washington is for the Big Three auto...

Abstract: Partisan Environmental Groups: Beware of Wolves Dressed in Sheep’s Clothing. These wolves should be seen for what they really are: massive democratic political machines, disguised as environmental causes. These wolves disguised in sheep's clothing are deceiving the America people. When an individual gives their hard-earned money to one of these organizations, most expect it to be used for the environmental cause they support, not political campaigning. It seems that it is more important to these groups to turn their once laudable movement into a political machine misleading the American public regarding their purely politically partisan agenda under the guise...

Re: Many environmental groups are using their tax-exempt IRS registered 501(c)(3) charitable organizations as fraudulent front operations for the Democrats-Soros Shadow Party~FlA. Environmental groups are simply Democrat political machines with millions of dollars in contributions and expenditures each year for the purpose of raising more money to pursue their agenda. ~ Sen. James Inhofe Mr./Madam President, I rise today to shed some light on a subject that is very important to me in my oversight duties as Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Earlier this year, the Environment and Public Works Committee held an oversight hearing where the...

Al Gore does Oprah - was anybody watching?29 11 2008 A guest post by: Russ Steele from NCWatchWe can only hope the most people in the US are shopping on Black Friday and not watching the Oprah Winfrey Show today.  Al Gore has brought his global warming propaganda machine to share with Oprah.  You can find the details on Oprah’s web page.  Here are some of the topics that Gore is pushing:Classic Gore:“Some of the leading scientists are now saying we may have as little as 10 years before we cross a kind of point-of-no-return, beyond which it’s much more difficult...

Abstract: President-elect Barack Obama said attacking global climate change is a "matter of urgency" that will create jobs as he got advice from Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue. Obama made clear he would adopt an aggressive approach to global warming when he takes over the White House on January 20. He and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met for nearly two hours with Gore at Obama's presidential transition office in Chicago. Obama hopes addressing climate change can create the kind of jobs that will help pull the U.S. economy out of a...

Washington, D.C. - Funding alternative energy wouldn't provide the best bang for the buck in a U.S. economic stimulus package, some economists said. Peter Orszag, President-elect Barack Obama's chief budget adviser, wrote in January that some investments in alternative energy were "totally impractical" and others "could end up making the economic situation worse," USA Today reported Friday. Orszag wrote his comments in January while serving as head of the Congressional Budget Office, the newspaper reported. Economist Vincent Reinhart of the American Enterprise Institute has also said stimulus money would be better invested elsewhere. Funding for research adds few jobs and...

Obama's World View on Energy and Climate - - In a video shown at a costly, two-day "global warming" jamboree at the Beverly Hills Hotel, hosted by Governor Schwarzenegger of California in November 2008, Barack Obama said: "Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season. Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken...

"The Arctic offers new energy and fishing resources as a result of global warming and new technology, the European Union said on Thursday. Melting ice also presented new navigation possibilities such as a short route to the Pacific Ocean, the EU executive said. The European Union should lead international efforts to protect the Arctic region from global warming and from the resulting increase in the exploitation by humans of its natural resources, officials in Brussels said Thursday.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his counterparts in 12 states and regional leaders from four other countries signed a declaration Wednesday pledging to work together to combat global warming, a move Schwarzenegger said will help push heads of state to curb their nations' greenhouse gas emissions. The document was signed on the last day of an international climate summit organized by the California governor, who hopes the two-day event will inform U.N. negotiations in Poland next month on a new global climate treaty that is to be completed by the end of next year. "We have to draw people into the debate,"...

Increasingly explicit and graphic global warming predictions have led to the danger of addiction: This is the story of one young man whose interest in global warming became a dangerous obsession. (Somewhere in Southern California) We have come to accept the daily onslaught of media stories reminding us that global warming will doom us all if mankind does not change its ways. Some of us have responded by trying to conserve electricity, by buying a smaller (or hybrid) car, or by contributing to environmental organizations. But there are some among us who have succombed to the excitement, the thrill, the...

Dear Senator McCain, Sir, YOU CHOSE a visit to a wind-farm in early summer 2008 to devote an entire campaign speech to the reassertion of your belief in the apocalyptic vision of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change - a lurid and fanciful account of imagined future events that was always baseless, was briefly exciting among the less thoughtful species of news commentators and politicians, but is now scientifically discredited.

Boise area could set record if measurable snow falls Friday or Saturday Winter weather won't hit the Boise area anywhere near as hard as eastern Idaho this weekend, but we're still within a few flakes of setting a weather record. The earliest measurable snow recorded in the fall season in Boise was Oct. 12, 1969, according to Megan Thimmesch, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Boise. The term “measurable” for snow includes .10 inch or greater. "We've been getting reports right up here in the Foothills at the Boise/Ada county line and at Ourada Ranch that it started...

... it's more important than ever that all of us appear to care about the environment. Maybe no one works harder on this than celebrities, who make it a point to show up in the papers every now and then with their latest eco-friendly gesture. We would applaud them for this, if it wasn't for the fact that the gestures are often mind-blowingly retarded. Earlier this year, Paul McCartney bought (or may have been given) a hybrid car from Lexus. So What's the Problem? The car was...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Thursday told a huge gathering of young people that they were inheriting a planet whose resources had been scarred and squandered to fuel insatiable consumption. His latest appeal to save the planet for future generations came in a address to some 150,000 youths in Sydney after he rode through the city's harbor standing on the outdoor deck of a white ferry as dozens of boats blew their horns. "Reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth, erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and...

The tuna industry says climate change is bringing benefits. The chief executive of the Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Association, Brian Jeffriess, says Port Lincoln crews in South Australia are reporting an excellent quality and size catch. He says it can be partly attributed to the effects of climate change on the waters of the Great Australian Bight. "There's no doubt climate change will bring benefits to the Great Australian Bight ecology in the sense that there's more upwellings therefore more small pelagics as we call them - sardines, mackerel, red bait, other fish - and that will bring tuna so...

The climate change debate is often portrayed as a stark choice between two extremes. Do we try to save the economy or do we try to save the environment? Many in established industries argue vociferously that you need to protect the former to save the latter, or that if we act to protect our environment then we might end up killing the economy. Ross Garnaut, in his much awaited draft report, seeks to turn that argument on its head: Australia has much to lose from even the mildest impacts of climate change. If we want to save our economy, then...

EU ministers grapple with global warming goal French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, chairing the first top-level meeting under France's six-month presidency of the EU, was to ask his counterparts to identify two key areas of national concern to help spur the negotiation process. PARIS - EUROPEAN UNION (EU) environment ministers began an informal two-day meeting here on Thursday aimed at clearing some of the many obstacles besetting their goal of slashing carbon emissions by 2020. French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, chairing the first top-level meeting under France's six-month presidency of the EU, was to ask his counterparts to identify two...

Longtime mountaineer Kent Beverly likes to say he has climbed nearly all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks, more commonly called “fourteeners,” “I try to encourage people to go other places than fourteeners,” he said. “There’s literally thousands of mountains in Colorado.” This time last year, Beverly had been out for weeks... who usually starts his climbing season on Memorial Day weekend. But that wasn’t in the cards this year. An 11-year high in snow smothered Colorado’s ranges last winter, leaving much of the snowpack yet to melt. “I haven’t really been out because I know there’s a lot of snow,” According...

BELGIUM - It has been hailed as the most important European Union legal proposal in the last five years: a package of laws aimed at fighting global warming by reducing carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from everything from power stations to cars. When France takes over the European Union's rotating six-month presidency on July 1, one of its key challenges will be to get all 27 member states to approve the European Commission's proposals. Officials say that a political deal must be done by the end of the year if the EU is to maintain the moral high ground in talks on...

Imagine a world where sagebrush grows in the northernmost reaches of Alaska. Where the Baltimore oriole no longer lives in Baltimore and the American finch can be found only in Canada. Snowshoe hares will turn white before the snow arrives, making them easy prey. Birds and bats will arrive in the spring before the insects - their main source of food. Along with the pikas and polar bears, 20 to 40 percent of the world's known species could go extinct within a century - no matter what wildlife managers do. -- SNIP -- And wildlife managers and federal policymakers could...

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada's opposition on Thursday unveiled an environmental plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions that would heavily tax polluters, but trim income taxes. "Canadians know that we need to be bold, not blind, to the challenges we are facing today, especially climate change," opposition Liberal leader Stephane Dion said. "We will tax fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas, according to the amount of carbon dioxide they emit when they are burned," he said in a speech. The ruling Conservatives have been criticized over their lackluster proposals to cut carbon emissions, and pundits believe the next election as...

Abstract: The heat generated inside our planet is predominantly of radionic (nuclear) origin. Hence, Earth in its entirety can be considered considered a slow nuclear reactor with its solid ”inner core” providing a major contribution to the total energy output. Since radionic heat is generated in the entire volume and cooling can only occur at the surface, the highest temperature inside Earth occurs at the center of the inner core. Overheating the center of the inner core reactor due to the so-called greenhouse effect on the surface of Earth may cause a meltdown condition, an enrichment of nuclear fuel and...

The departure from office of US President George W. Bush will give a “very promising” outlook to international talks on global warming and the $64bn market in greenhouse gas emissions, said the United Nations’ top official on climate change. “The US is very promising. All three [presidential] candidates are interested in climate change, all three want international engagement, all three favour a cap-and-trade approach [on emissions], which augurs well for the continuation of the carbon market,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the parent treaty to the Kyoto protocol, in an interview...

PARIS - President Bush has finally set a target date for reining in U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases but the plan is falling flat in the international arena, where critics have long accused him of not moving quickly enough on tackling global warming. "Losership instead of leadership," Germany's environment minister said Thursday of Bush's new strategy. A major disappointment, South Africa said. Too little and too late, a Chinese official added. Bush's speech Wednesday, in which he said the United States must stop the growth of its emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases by 2025, dominated U.S.-sponsored climate...

Climate Change: Legislation pending in the Senate might warm environmentalists' hearts, but not because of potential cuts in carbon emissions. Their interest is in the heavy economic costs the plans would inflict.Each bill uses the cap-and-trade scheme to control carbon dioxide emissions. Each establishes limits, then prescribes how to distribute or sell to the private sector the rights to emit specific amounts of greenhouse gases under the cap. The bill sponsored by Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is the least egregious. It would force greenhouse gas emissions to be cut to about 3% below last year's level....

Yet with Mr. Ehrlich, as with Mr. Miller, it is the psychology of the duped disciples that raises the most questions. Ms. Mills, at least, demonstrates exactly the same ideological frenzy and moral vanity, the hatred of elders and the past, as a Red Guard denouncing his teachers in the Cultural Revolution. Even today, her speech has the power to frighten with its self-righteous malice. For while Ms. Mills is talking about the end of civilization, she is no more able than a Mao or a Savonarola to disguise her satisfaction at the prospect.

Our obsession with global warming causes us to confront a perceived crisis that could explode in 50 years. Meanwhile, we ignore real crises that could explode next week. While reading Don Quixote recently, I realized why this 400-year-old novel remains a classic of Western literature. At the heart of the story line lies an unchanging and always-identifiable quality of human nature: our tendency to be blinded by obsession. Don Quixote is the story of Alonso Quixano, who, enchanted with chivalrous ideals and suffering hallucinations of grandeur, dubs himself Don Quixote de la Mancha before taking up the lance and sword...

Increased volcanic activity is linked to ice melted by the effects of global warming, a study has found. So much ice in Iceland has melted in the past century that the pressure on the land beneath has lessened, which allows more of the rock deep in the ground to turn to magma. Until the ice melted, the pressure was so intense that the rock remained solid. Carolina Pagli, of the University of Leeds, led research which calculated that over the past century the production of magma had increased by 10 per cent.

PARIS -- John McCain wrapped up his five-country swing to the Middle East and Europe by meeting with two familiar faces- one old and one new. In London this morning, former Prime Minister Tony Blair and McCain had breakfast together at the swanky Mandarin Oriental hotel. A quick photo-op for reporters before the official visit quickly became a reflection of McCain's recent travels. On the friendship with Britain, McCain said, "What I've learned from our trip is that our alliance and our relationship is still strong. There are areas such as climate change, transparency of international financial institutions, Israeli-Palestinian peace...

LONDON (AFP) - US Republican presidential hopeful John McCain Friday discussed the situation in the Middle East and global warming with former British prime minister Tony Blair, the ex-premier's spokesman said. Blair met with McCain in London as well as US senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, McCain's colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee who are travelling with him, the spokesman told AFP. "They met, but also, obviously with Senator Lieberman and Senator Graham. The subjects they spoke about were the Middle East and climate change," he said. McCain, who is on a week-long tour of Europe and the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Here's what leading presidential candidates have said about climate change and energy policies, and what they want to do. REPUBLICAN ARIZONA SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: "I know that climate change is real ... we've got to address it, we can do it with technology, with cap and trade, with capitalist and free enterprise motivation." Co-authored bill to cut emissions by 65 percent by 2050, favors unspecified fuel efficiency increase and overall energy efficiency. DEMOCRATIC NEW YORK SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: "We need to start on a path to slow, stop and reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions." Supports...

Without exactly being like Mike, Sen. John McCain yesterday join-ed Mayor Bloomberg in calling global warming a reality to be dealt with by weaning the U.S. off Mideast oil. "The world is already feeling the powerful effects of global warming," McCain said in calling for caps on carbon emissions, and "the problem isn't some Hollywood invention." The Arizona Republican did not directly address Bloomberg's environmental plan, which includes $8 tolls on cars south of 86th St. But a McCain spokesman said the mayor and the senator were in sync on facing up to a greenhouse gas effect that many in...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Recent U.S. Senate hearings into alleged global warming, chaired by Arizona Republican John McCain, were among the "most biased" that a noted climatologist has ever seen - "much less balanced than anything I saw in the Clinton administration," he said. Patrick J. Michaels is the author of a new book "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media." He is an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia who believes that claims of human-caused "global warming" are scientifically unfounded. Michaels spoke with CNSNews.com Thursday following a panel discussion sponsored by the...

Think you can sidestep the issue of “global warming,” simply by voting Republican? Think again. Now that Senator John McCain is officially the Republican nominee for President, global warming is, whether anyone likes it or not, an “issue” for both of our nation’s dominant political parties. McCain has been gravitating towards this issue for several years, and made his mark with it during his chairing of the U.S. Senate hearings on global warming back in 2004

WASHINGTON -- Imagining how John McCain, the Navy war hero, would play the role of commander in chief has been easy. Imagining how John McCain, the policy maverick, would lead as chief executive of the U.S. economy has been tougher. In a wide-ranging interview last week, Sen. McCain offered the most-detailed account to date of his thinking on economic issues. (snip) Climate Change Sen. McCain's biggest regulatory effort is likely to come in the field of climate change. Along with independent Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who was then a Democrat, Sen. McCain introduced the earliest version of a cap-and-trade system...

A team of scientists have found that the economic damages from hurricanes have increased in the U.S. over time due to greater population, infrastructure, and wealth on the U.S. coastlines, and not to any spike in the number or intensity of hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina, August 28, 2005. + High Resolution (Credit NOAA) “We found that although some decades were quieter and less damaging in the U.S. and others had more land-falling hurricanes and more damage, the economic costs of land-falling hurricanes have steadily increased over time,” said Chris Landsea, one of the researchers as well as the science and operations...

The United Nations Earth Czar, Al Gore, hailed the Bali-X agreement as a critical step in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "Today, we have continued the long tradition of cooperation that has maintained agreements enabling negotiations which provide a basis for future talks", announced His Excellency. "We have renewed hope that the difficult, but historic, scientific consensus that was reached almost twenty years ago will not have been in vain." "Yes, global temperatures have fallen", admitted Mr. Gore in private, "but as we all know, this spurious cooling trend will suddenly change to rapid warming…possibly as early as...

You don't have to be religious to qualify as a fundamentalist. You can be Al Gore, the messiah figure for the global warming cult, whose followers truly believe their gospel of imminent extermination in a Noah-like flood, if we don't immediately change our carbon polluting ways.One of the traits of a cult is its refusal to consider any evidence that might disprove the faith. And so it is doubtful the global warming cultists will be moved by 400 scientists, many of whom, according to the WashingtonTimes, "are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that...

TORONTO - After years of warmer-than-normal winters that spurred constant talk of global warming, winter this year is expected to be the coldest in almost 15 years and should remind everyone of what real Canadian cold feels like, Environment Canada said Friday. With the exception of only small pockets of northern Canada and southwestern Ontario, this December through February is forecast to be one of the harshest winters in recent memory across the country, said senior climatologist David Phillips. "It is somewhat remarkable that we're seeing the same situation from coast to coast to almost coast - from Vancouver Island...

Dear Vice President Gore: Americans from every corner of our nation are calling on you. Please listen to our plea and run for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States in 2008. Never before has America needed a leader of your stature, vision and experience more than now. The next presidential election will be the most crucial one in our history, and you are the only Democrat who can unite the country and lead us to victory. And this country -- indeed, the entire world -- cannot afford anything less.

Unless a dramatic and historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 9 weeks, 2007 will rank as a historically inactive TC year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. During the past 30 years, only 1977, 1981, and 1983 have had less activity to date (January-TODAY, Accumulated Cyclone Energy). For the period of June 1 - TODAY, only 1977 has experienced LESS tropical cyclone activity than 2007. For the North Atlantic basin, Tropical Storm Noel is currently too weak to impact any of these results. However, one should always be prepared for late-season developments since hurricane season ends on...