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This guy (Headmaster Rob Benzie) has become Scrooge in England, except he doesn’t provide even one lump of coal, because, well that would mess up his “carbon footprint”. This is just too bizarre not to pass on, thanks to The Daily Bayonet who writes: A headmaster at a British school decided a great lesson in sustainability would be to turn off the heat for a day. In December: Pupils at Ansford Academy in Castle Cary, Somerset, were forced to grip their pens through thick gloves and wear their coats and hats in class as temperatures dropped to 1C. The school’s...

Representatives from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Durban, South Africa, to negotiate strategies for dealing with climate change, including how to extend the soon-to-expire Kyoto Protocol. Efforts to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto pact, which committed industrialized nations to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a set amount by 2012, have been on hold since the failure of the climate conference in Copenhagen two years ago. Previous debates have focused on how to balance the responsibilities of developed nations with those of emerging and still-developing countries, and few believe this conference, which begins Monday, will result in a new...

More than 200 Filipino children and youths gathered Tuesday in Pasay City for a national forum on climate change organized by the Climate Change Commission. The national youth workshop, as part of the first carbon neutral event in the Philippines, was held at the SMX Mall of Asia Convention Centre. It was organized by the Climate Change Commission in partnership with Al Gore’s The Climate Reality Project, National Youth Commission, Sangguniang Kabataan Federation, Council for the Welfare of Children, UNICEF-Philippines and USAID-Philippines. In a message sent for the national gathering, Nobel Laureate and former United States Vice President Al Gore,...

The Farmers' Almanac recently issued their outlook for the 2011-2012 winter season and are predicting a wet and wild winter for much of the nation. According to their forecasters, the Farmers' Almanac is predicting a season of "crime and punishment" with lots of unusually cold and stormy conditions. In the northern Plains, northern Rockies, and western Great Lakes, folks can expect frigid cold temperatures while those in the southern and eastern United States will experience above average temperatures. Near normal temperatures are predicted for the Midwest and far western parts of the country.

California plan(s) to launch their long-promised cap and trade program to fight global warming starting tomorrow (Oct. 20, 2011). (Not coincidentally) Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will include these two headlines that are up already online: Japan Reconsiders Plan to Cut Carbon Emissions And, EU Weighs Pullback on Cutting Emissions

There seems little possibility that next month's climate summit in Durban will produce an emissions reduction agreement -- meaning the world will soon lack any binding CO2 targets. Europe may soon find itself alone in the fight against global warming. A climate catastrophe descended on the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin early last week. Politicians and diplomats from around the world were attending a conference to discuss how global warming will affect the world. They examined scenarios depicting how millions of people living in coastal areas could escape flooding, what will happen to the fishing and mineral rights of island...

From the mighty polar bear to the tiny house sparrow, many of Earth's species appear to be shrinking in size, a new study reports. And the authors think it's probably due to global warming, a little like wool sweaters that shrink when washed in hot water. But other experts say that conclusion goes too far, blaming global warming for what may be natural changes. ... The shrinking victims, according to the study, include cotton, corn, strawberries, bay scallops, shrimp, crayfish, carp, Atlantic salmon, herring, frogs, toads, iguanas, hooded robins, red-billed gulls, California squirrels, lynx and wood rats. Two years ago,...

Depopulation of Americas may have cooled climate MINNEAPOLIS — By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who followed may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe’s climate for centuries. The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University. “We have a massive reforestation event that’s sequestering carbon … coincident...

Scientists say climate change will eventually claim many victims -– including, according to a new report, chocolate. As temperatures increase and weather trends change, the main growing regions for cocoa could shrink drastically, according to new research from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. Ghana and the Ivory Coast –- which produce more than half of the global cocoa supply –- could take a major hit by 2050. Currently, the optimal locations to grow the crop are about 330 feet to 820 feet above sea level, with temperatures of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit to 77 degrees. That range will soar...

Earth's temperatures will likely stabilize for a period as deep ocean waters absorb enough heat to mask the effects of global warming for up to a decade, a new study indicates. Earth's "missing heat" has long been a mystery for climate scientists as the last decade saw an incessant growth in greenhouse gas emissions did not elevate surface temperature as much as expected. The joint U.S.-Australian study, based on computer simulations of global climate, points to ocean layers deeper than 1,000 feet (300 meters) as the main location of the "missing heat" during periods such as the past decade when...

Nobel prize winner for physics in 1973 Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society (APS) on September 13, 2011 in disgust over the group's promotion of man-made global warming fears. Climate Depot has obtained the exclusive email Giaever sent titled "I resign from APS" to APS Executive Officer Kate Kirby to announce his formal resignation. Dr. Giaever wrote to Kirby of APS: “Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I cannot live with the (APS) statement below (on global warming): APS: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming...

Science: Al Gore's Current TV will use 24 straight hours of airtime this week to try to convert global warming skeptics. Will he mention a recent report that shows the climate change scare is grossly overblown? And we also doubt that anyone else connected with the sympathetic media will. The CERN report, which we covered on this page two weeks ago, has been largely ignored by the mainstream press. Had the European Organization for Nuclear Research (known by its French acronym, CERN) report bolstered the conjecture that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are warming the planet, the story would have gone...

Despite winning a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his work in the global warming area, most voters don’t consider former Vice President Al Gore an expert on the subject. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that just 24% of voters consider Gore an expert on global warming. Fifty-nine percent (59%) do not think Gore is an expert on the subject, an increase in skepticism of 12 points since March 2007. Another 18% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.) While a plurality of Democrats (43%) considers Gore an expert on global...

Cosmic rays interact with Earth's atmosphere - Image via WikipediaIsraeli Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv posted a guest essay at Luboš Motl The Reference Frame titled: The CLOUD is clearingIn a nutshell he’s saying that cosmic ray flux modulated by solar variability has a strong place right alongside CO2, and may in fact be a larger forcing.He writes: The results are very beautiful and they demonstrate, yet again, how cosmic rays (which govern the amount of atmospheric ionization) can in principle have an effect on climate.What do I mean? First, it is well known that solar variability has a large effect on...

State Temp Date AL 112 Sept. 5, 1925 AK 100 27-Jun-15 AZ 128 29-Jun-94 AR 120 Aug. 10, 1936 CA 134 10-Jul-13 CO 114 July 11, 1888 CT 106 15-Jul-95 DE 110 21-Jul-30 FL 109 29-Jun-31 GA 112 Aug. 20, 1983 HI 100 Apr. 27, 1931 ID 118 28-Jul-34 IL 117 14-Jul-54 IN 116 14-Jul-36 IA 118 20-Jul-34 KS 121 24-Jul-36 KY 114 28-Jul-30 LA 114 Aug. 10, 1936 ME 105 10-Jul-11 MD 109 10-Jul-36 MA 107 Aug. 2, 1975 MI 112 13-Jul-36 MN 114 6-Jul-36 MS 115 29-Jul-30 MO 118 14-Jul-54 MT 117 5-Jul-37 NE 118 24-Jul-36 NV 125...

Has new research disproven the theoretical models of anthropogenic global warming?  A new study by a European nuclear research group appears to show that the actual prime cause of temperature shifts in the Earth’s climate isn’t carbon dioxide at all, or even the broader range of “greenhouse gases,” but the large ball of fire in the center of the solar system.  Not that this study from CERN has attracted much attention in the media, at least not in the US — but at least Nature reported the results and the implications: It sounds like a conspiracy theory: ‘cosmic rays’ from...

A report from Australia’s Climate Institute which links global warming with mental illness is already drawing eyerolls from a central academic in the global climate-change debate. In its report, the anti-carbon emissions organization argues that a spike in severe weather events in Australia coincides with increased rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse. Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish professor and environmental statistician, and a cautious believer in global warming — but also an advocate for sound and rational decisions about how to fix it — told The Daily Caller the study is “problematic.” Cutting carbon emissions to slow a...

President Obama faces political catastrophe in the form of Solyndra -- a San Francisco Bay area solar company that he touted as a gleaming example of green technology. It has announced it will declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. More than 1,100 people will lose their jobs.

President Obama on Tuesday informed House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that his administration is considering seven regulations that would cost more than $1 billion. Boehner asked for the list of costly rules last week as the GOP prepped a fall jobs agenda focused on stopping regulations and cutting taxes.Four of the regulations Obama listed as costing more than $1 billion are being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency. The others are from the Department of Transportation. “I agree that it is extremely important to minimize regulatory burdens and to avoid unjustified regulatory costs, particularly in this difficult economic period,” Obama wrote to Boehner. “I...

Rising greenhouse emissions may tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report for Nasa It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim. Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain. This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by scientists at Nasa and Pennsylvania State...