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Global climate models aren’t given nearly enough credit for their accurate global temperature change projections. As the 2014 IPCC report showed, observed global surface temperature changes have been within the range of climate model simulations. Now a new study shows that the models were even more accurate than previously thought. In previous evaluations like the one done by the IPCC, climate model simulations of global surface air temperature were compared to global surface temperature observational records like HadCRUT4. However, over the oceans, HadCRUT4 uses sea surface temperatures rather than air temperatures. There’s a common myth that models are unreliable, often...

Organic agriculture is an unscientific, heavily subsidized marketing gimmick that misleads and rips off consumers. The federal government should stop promoting and subsidizing it. Consumers of organic foods are getting both more and less than they bargained for. On both counts, it’s not good. Many people who pay the huge premium—often more than a hundred percent–for organic foods do so because they’re afraid of pesticides. If that’s their rationale, they misunderstand the nuances of organic agriculture. Although it’s true that synthetic chemical pesticides are generally prohibited, there is a lengthy list of exceptions listed in the Organic Foods Production Act,...

The measured US temperature data from USHCN shows that the US is on a long-term cooling trend. But the reported temperatures from NOAA show a strong warming trend....

Have three climate change scientists been ASSASSINATED? The astonishing claim made by a Cambridge professor A Cambridge professor has claimed that three scientists investigating climate change in the Arctic may have been assassinated. Professor Peter Wadhams insists Seymour Laxon, Katharine Giles and Tim Boyd could have been murdered by someone possibly working for the oil industry or within government forces. The trio had been studying the polar ice caps - with a focus on sea ice - when they died within a few months of each other in 2013.

What, you ask, can be done to address climate change? A controversial, but cheap solution of last resort has emerged known as “solar radiation management.” A geoengineering technique, it would shoot particles into the sky to reflect sunlight back to space. “The central idea is to make the planet a little bit more reflective, which tends to cool it down, because it will absorb less sunlight. And that will partially and imperfectly compensate for the buildup of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which are tending to trap heat and make the earth warmer,” says Harvard environmental scientist David Keith, who...

A lawsuit brought by environmentalists and federal regulators has forced a major utility to phase out coal use at six power plants in Iowa. Activists claim these retirements bring the total number of U.S. coal plants shut down to 200 — or 40 percent of the U.S. coal plant fleet. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department of Justice announced an Iowa subsidiary of Alliant Energy agreed to pay $7.1 million in civil penalties to environmental projects for violating the Clean Air Act. The settlement also requires the company to stop burning coal or shut down six power...

It appears to be the obvious answer to the global-warming problem. We suck carbon dioxide out of the air and either recycle it into low-carbon fuel or stick it underground. As solutions go, it's simple, logical, even elegant. Also necessary. "Scientists are increasingly convinced that we are going to need large-scale removal systems to fight climate change," says Noah Deich, founder of the nonprofit Center for Carbon Removal. The key problem apparently isn't technological. Three startups are making significant strides in their efforts to create processes that could "harvest" millions of tons of CO2 from the air around us. The...

<p>Long-haul flights are getting longer due to stronger winds caused by global warming, according to a study.</p> <p>Scientists linked a small increase in return-journey times of long-haul flights with an increase in the variation of the jet stream, the high altitude air that flows from west to east.</p>

The threat of climate change needs to be assessed in the same comprehensive way as nuclear weapons proliferation, according to a UK foreign minister. Baroness Joyce Anelay, minister of state at the Commonwealth and Foreign Office, said the indirect impacts of global warming, such as deteriorating international security, could be far greater than the direct effects, such as flooding. The report, commissioned by the Foreign Office, and written by experts from the UK, US, China and India, is stark in its assessment of the wide-ranging dangers posed by unchecked global warming, including: - very large risks to global food security,...

Solar scientists predict that the Earth will enter a "mini ice age" around 2030 due to decreased activity by the sun, which will bring with it frigid cold winters. The last time the Earth experienced a similar situation occurred between 1645 and 1715.

In Evangelii Gaudium Francis declared (quoting John XXIII) that “We feel that we must disagree with those prophets of doom who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.” Just over a year-and-a-half later, however, Francis declared in Laudato Si’ that “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain.” A change of position? Perhaps an outright self-contradiction? It is neither. The two statements relate to different sorts of prophet. The first statement, echoing the truly fatuous optimism of John XXIII, scoffs at traditional Catholic “prophets of doom,” including a long line...

Rising sea levels have been mostly measured in inches in the past decades, but scientists said they could increase more than 20 feet in the future as global warming continues to melt ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. The dire projections are based on a look back at the climate record, with scientists finding that increases of 20 feet have happened at least twice over the past 3 million years when temperatures were very similar to what they are today. Peter Clark, an Oregon State paleoclimatologist and another co-author of the study, said that because current carbon dioxide levels are...

They are either championed as brave voices willing to speak out against the scientific majority or dismissed as cranks who lack the evidence to support their arguments. Now deniers of global warming have been dealt a stinging blow by psychologists who found skeptics of man-made climate change tend to believe in conspiracy theories. They say the conspiracist outlook taken by many climate change skeptics is harming the public debate over global warming. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol who led the work, said: 'These results add to a growing body of research on the nature...

A fundraising campaign claiming to be from a pregnant woman seeking to raise money online from pro-life supporters to stop a planned abortion turned out to be a publicity stunt for a new fiction book. The webpage, revealed Tuesday to be an “augmented excerpt” from the newly released paperback, initially purported to seek $1M for an anonymous 26-year-old woman who was seven weeks pregnant. For pro-life organizations, the hoax has a silver lining of drawing attention to the many pregnancy support centers available for women facing challenging and unexpected pregnancy, said Lila Rose, president of Live Action, a pro-life non-profit.

Imagine that, another phony hate crime. A Utah man who alleged assailants carved homophobic slurs into his arms, robbed his pizza restaurant and firebombed his house has admitted faking the attacks, authorities said. Now the question is whether Rick Jones, 22, of Delta will be prosecuted for reporting false crimes, Millard County Sheriff Robert Dekker told CNN affiliate KSL. “The investigation has come to an end today with the admission of Richard (Rick) L. Jones Jr. to having staged all of the incidents,” the Sheriff’s Office and County Attorney’s office said in a Tuesday statement. Dekker said he didn’t know...

Forty-four-year-old Vincent Broughton of Colorado Springs, Colo., is facing charges of bias-motivated crime, harassment, littering and disorderly conduct.A Colorado Springs, Colo., man was arrested Tuesday after admitting to local station KRDO that he was the one who posted racially charged signs outside two churches and around the city, KRDO reports. Vincent Broughton, who is black, faces charges of committing a bias-motivated crime, disorderly conduct, harassment and littering, the news site notes. The signs were first put up outside New Covenant Church of God in Christ, and referenced the Ku Klux Klan. On Monday, three signs were found outside the Relevant...

Active Shooter, Navy Yard, Washington Campus on lockdown.

America is still reeling from the horrific Charleston, S.C., massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that claimed the lives of nine innocent people. The last thing the community and our country need are hysterical journalists compounding the pain with inflammatory reporting on an unsubstantiated "epidemic" of black church arsons. On Monday, a Baltimore Sun lead editorial decried "a series of mysterious fires at African-American churches across the South" in the wake of the Charleston murders. The newspaper cited a "pattern" of attacks, including what it claimed was an "uptick in attacks on 37 black churches in the South" in...

A man claiming responsibility for hanging a Confederate flag from a memorial for black soldiers says he didn’t intend it as a racist gesture—and in fact was protesting the symbol and what he believes it represents. Some who saw the flag hanging from the memorial—including a woman who took it down—interpreted its placement as a hateful gesture. The flag hung from a sword held by a sculpture of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, commanding officer of the Union Army’s Massachusetts 54th Regiment.

Rich countries are very, very far from raising the billions they promised to help poor countries fight climate change, jeopardising the prospects of reaching a global warming deal at Paris, the world’s rising economies warned. As a key United Nations meeting got underway, Brazil, China, India and South Africa said they were disappointed in rich countries’ failure to make good on a promise six years ago to mobilise $100bn a year by 2020 for climate finance. The funds, intended to help developing countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for sea-level rises, extreme weather and other consequences of climate...