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Two video bloggers got press for posting a video which they claimed shows the NYPD’s Islamophobia. In the video, two men wearing western clothes argue and push each other, and an officer does nothing. When dressed in Muslim garb, but acting the same way, they got a different reaction. The video was tweeted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Huffington Post called it a “small glimpse into the ugly world of racial profiling.” …

The recent report published by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, an organization aimed at helping the world's societies to combat the effects of climate change, suggests that the costs of combating climate change are considerably lower than widespread opinion has suggested. The study tells us that between 2015 and 2030, nations are expected to invest roughly $90 trillion in urban, land-use and energy infrastructure. The report suggests that implementing the fixes necessary to transition to entirely sustainable sources of energy would amount to 4 trillion. So, this amounts to 5% increase of the total amount that is...

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A UN proposal that would see small island states offered debt relief to pay for climate change contains a “fundamentally unjust” blind spot, according to development groups. But advocates see the idea as an innovative way to increase the money available for climate change adaptation in the most vulnerable states. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is working on an initiative that would see rich countries write off debt owed to them by Small Island Developing States (Sids) in exchange for the money being spent on climate change adaptation. Due to their disproportionate contribution to climate change, industrialised countries agreed to...

Research ecologist Nathan Stephenson crawled around magnificent Giant Forest, checking young giant sequoias for damage from California’s three-year drought. Though the older sequoias have survived past climate warmups, no one knows how these natural treasures will hold up this time. Climate warming is moving faster than it has in the past, scientists say. Some researchers worry that the Sierra will lose some trees that were alive before the time of Christ. They acknowledge it’s possible the giant sequoia will not survive as a species.

HEAR that rain on the roof last week? That’s nature telling us our politicians have been idiots. I’m talking about the politicians who let themselves be fooled into thinking it never would rain like this again. I’m talking about politicians who listened to the likes of Tim Flannery, the 2007 Australian of the Year and then head of the Climate Commission. From 2005 to 2008, Flannery, the global warming guru, made a string of outlandish claims like these: “So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems ... “In Adelaide, Sydney and...

Wine and beer lovers face an uncertain future. While climate change is a distant consideration for many global businesses, grapes and grains are on the front line. The good news for those who like a tipple is that alcoholic drinks makers are among businesses leading the way in devising technology to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Experts say such mitigation and adaptation techniques are critical for a range of companies to prepare for a future that is hotter, drier and prone to extreme weather and consequences such as flooding.

For a good part of the year, the colorful rufous hummingbird can be spotted all over Portland. After nesting and breeding here in the summer and fall, these feisty hummers migrate some 2,000 miles southward to winter in Mexico. But over the next few decades, the tiny bird is expected to become increasingly rare in Portland. Climate change is likely to alter its travel plans, which include the longest annual migration of any hummingbird species. Its range is likely to shift northward, according to predictions in a new report from the National Audubon Society. The rufous, like hundreds of other...

Hot on the heels of the Lewis and Curry paper, we have this new paper, which looks to be well researched, empirically based, and a potential blockbuster for dimming the alarmism that has been so prevalent over climate sensitivity. With a climate sensitivity of just 0.43°C, it takes the air out of the alarmism balloon. The Hockey Schtick writes: A new paper published in the Open Journal of Atmospheric and Climate Change by renowned professor of physics and expert on spectroscopy Dr. Hermann Harde finds that climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 levels is only about [0.6C], about 7...

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Monday released a report asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages. It also predicted rising demand for military disaster responses as extreme weather creates more global humanitarian crises. The report lays out a road map to show how the military will adapt to rising sea levels, more violent storms and widespread droughts. The Defense Department will begin by integrating plans for climate change risks across all of its operations, from war games and strategic military planning situations to...

Fewer than half of American states are working to protect themselves from climate change, despite more detailed warnings from scientists that communities are already being damaged, according to a new online clearinghouse of states’ efforts compiled by the Georgetown Climate Center. Fourteen states have plans to prepare for the effects of climate change. California, New York and Maryland are among those that have made the greatest progress toward the dozens of goals their plans set forth, such as cutting statewide greenhouse gas emissions, improving infrastructure, securing water supplies, battling wildfires or coping with rising sea levels. Even those states have...

Global warming periods and abundant carbon dioxide have never been causes of mass extinctions. One thing that those of us who have been longtime observers and debunkers of the lies surrounding global warming and/or climate change have noticed is that the “Warmists” have gotten increasingly desperate after more than eighteen years in which there has been no warming. As what they call “a pause” continues, they are coming up with some of the most absurd “research” to make their case. When you consider that not one single computer model produced by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or any...

The world is warming. The beasts are dying en masse. The oceans are rising. The deserts are roasting. It's the survival of the fittest out there, guys. Who's going to win, evolutionarily speaking? Men or women? It turns out that warming temperatures may have a surprising gender bias—in favor of women. That's the conclusion of a team of Japanese researchers who have discovered a "statistically significant" association between climate change—including rising temperatures and extreme weather events—and the birth rates of boys and girls in Japan. Warmer temperatures have accompanied an increased proportion of female babies in the population, and a...

Environmental scientists want to introduce a new system to prove that adverse weather events are directly linked to climate change to counter global warming sceptics. Under the new plan, a heatwave or major storm will be linked scientifically to man made climate change immediately after the event to prevent critics from blaming it on natural variations in the weather. Scientists want to be able to provide proof of whether an event was caused by climate change within three day rather than the current system which can take up to a year. Experts claim that such a long wait for proof...

The e-mails threatening death to hundreds of Harvard students and affiliates may not be credible, according to a community advisory from Steven Catalano, Harvard University Police Department’s Public Information Officer. Initial investigation indicates that the e-mails were sent from overseas, undercutting the legitimacy of its authors claim to live in Boston. The threat was sent at approximately 4:45 p.m. Friday, according to initial university police correspondence. While the full content of the message was not provided by authorities, The Crimson student newspaper provided further details about the “racially charged” e-mail: Addressed to “All students at Harvard,” the text of both...

Scientists frequently tout new evidence that climate change will drive some of the most populated cities in the United States underwater. New York, Boston and Miami are all at risk. But the impact of climate change varies even within cities, putting residents of poor neighborhoods at greatest risk of suffering from heat-related ailments, researchers say. “Cities tend to be warmer, but it’s spatially variable within cities,” says Joyce Klein Rosenthal, a researcher at Harvard who published a recent study on the impact of climate change in cities. “Generally, higher poverty neighborhoods are warmer and wealthier neighborhoods are cooler.”

Our most ancient ancestors were battling climate change to survive droughts, freezing and flooding. And now a growing number of scientists believe that shifts in the Earth’s climate are responsible for creating some of our most distinctive characteristics. Their research suggests that large evolutionary leaps, such as the development of our bigger brains and ability to create and use complex tools, coincided with periods of volatile climate change.

Global warming contributed to extreme heat waves in many parts of the world last year, but cannot be definitively linked to the California drought, according to a report released Monday. In the report, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 20 research teams explored the causes of 16 extreme weather events recorded in 2013, including torrential downpours in Colorado, heat waves in Korea and Australia and a blizzard in South Dakota. The studies overwhelmingly showed that human-caused climate change played a role in the heat waves, in some cases making them 10 times more likely. But the report...

The savage heat waves that struck Australia in 2013 were almost certainly a direct consequence of the human release of greenhouse gases, researchers said Monday. It is perhaps the most definitive statement climate scientists have made that ties a specific weather event to global warming. Five groups of researchers, using distinct methods, analyzed the heat that baked Australia for much of last year and continued into 2014. All five came to the conclusion that last year’s heat waves could not have been as severe without the long-term climatic warming caused by human activity. “When we look at the heat across...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said it was unfortunate that Republicans continue to block legislation that aims to address the effects of climate change. “This is a crisis and we’ve got address it,” Sanders said Tuesday. “The bad news is that Republicans in Congress, many of whom don’t even believe the scientific consensus that global warming is a growing threat to our planet, continue to block legislation to address the planetary crisis.” Sanders’ comments were prompted by President Obama’s speech on climate change at the United Nations. Obama said this is the generation with the power to prevent a global climate...