Free Republic

December 06, 2007, 4:00 a.m. Global Warming Saps Hurricane StrengthReduce emissions, save the ‘canes! By David Freddoso In June, as the 2007 hurricane season began, the predictions were dire. There were to be 16 named storms. Nine hurricanes. Five “intense hurricanes.� A 74 percent-chance of a storm hitting the U.S. coastline — all above the historical average. And numerous news stories cited Global Warming as the culprit for what was about to happen. Hurricane season just ended over the weekend. The results? There have been six hurricanes (the historic average), two of them “intense hurricanes� (below average). Not one...

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...

Vanishing glaciers, rising sea levels, ravenous droughts. The natural world today offers a broad—and dire—catalog of scientific phenomena for teachers wanting to craft classroom lessons on the topic of climate change. As public concern about global warming increases, teachers are carving out a larger place for those issues in science classes, particularly at the high school level. Yet educators also say they face challenges in finding accurate and student-friendly classroom activities and lessons on the topic, partly because textbooks and other materials have not caught up to a growing body of scientific evidence about climate change. Consequently, many science teachers...

Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our activities may be shortening the life of the universe too. The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have. Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang. The Boomerang Nebula, mankind ‘shortening the universe’s life’ Cosmologists claim by observing dark...

Apocalyptic visions of climate change used by newspapers, environmental groups and the UK government amount to "climate porn", a think-tank says. The report from the Labour-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says over-use of alarming images is a "counsel of despair". It says they make people feel helpless and says the use of cataclysmic imagery is partly commercially motivated. However, newspapers have defended their coverage of a "crucial issue". 'Nobody knows' The IPPR report also criticises the reporting of individual climate-friendly acts as "mundane, domestic and uncompelling". The style of climate change discourse is that we maximise the problem...