Free Republic

Comprehensive rebuttals to contrarians' pseudo-scientific explanations why global warming is just a myth On November 18, with the United Nations Global Warming Conference in Copenhagen fast approaching, U.S. Sen. James R. Inhofe (R–Okla.) took the floor of the Senate and proclaimed 2009 to be “The Year of the Skeptic.” Had the senator’s speech marked a new commitment to dispassionate, rational inquiry, a respect for scientific thought and a well-grounded doubt in ghosts, astrology,creationism and homeopathy, it might have been cause for cheer. But Inhofe had a more narrow definition of skeptic in mind: he meant “standing up and exposing the...

A chilly Arctic summer has left 533,000 more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year - an increase of 29 per cent. (snip) ...days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores. The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year. More than 20 yachts that had planned to sail it have been left ice-bound and a cruise ship attempting the route was forced...

OSLO (Reuters) – A North Atlantic current flowing into the Arctic Ocean is warmer than for at least 2,000 years in a sign that global warming is likely to bring ice-free seas around the North Pole in summers, a study showed. Scientists said that waters at the northern end of the Gulf Stream, between Greenland and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, averaged 6 degrees Celsius (42.80F) in recent summers, warmer than at natural peaks during Roman or Medieval times. "The temperature is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years," lead author Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature...

THE shocking images of oil-covered wildlife and ruined beaches across the Gulf of Mexico have horrified millions. But passionate green campaigner Sir Paul McCartney believes the environmental disaster may have a silver lining, with the search for clean, renewable energy now being pushed forward. The Beatles legend said: "Sadly we need disasters like this to show people. Some people don't believe in climate warming - like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust. "But the facts indicate that there's something going on and we've got to be aware of it if we want our kids to inherit a decent...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A decrease in airborne dust and volcanic emissions has contributed to warming the North Atlantic Ocean in the past three decades, a study showed. About 70 percent of the Atlantic's warming since 1980, at an average per-decade rate of a half-degree Fahrenheit (a quarter-degree Celsius), was due to less dust blown from African dust storms or to volcanic eruptions, scientists wrote in the journal Science. "Volcanoes and dust storms are really important if you want to understand (climatic) changes over long periods of time," said the study's lead author Amato Evan, a researcher with the University of...

A college student's new discovery of fossils collected in the East Antarctic suggests that the frozen polar cap was once a much balmier place. The well-preserved fossils of ostracods, a type of small crustaceans, came from the Dry Valleys region of Antarctica's Transantarctic Mountains and date from about 14 million years ago. The fossils were a rare find, showing all of the ostracods' soft anatomy in 3-D. The fossils were discovered by Richard Thommasson during screening of the sediment in research team member Allan Ashworth's lab at North Dakota State University. Because ostracods couldn't survive in the current Antarctic climate,...

Warmer planet may mean fewer Atlantic hurricanes NewScientist.com news service Mason Inman Contrary to the widespread view that a warming world will bring more hurricanes, a controversial new study suggests the number of cyclones could actually drop in the North Atlantic. Hurricanes have become a lightning rod for arguments over what global warming might have in store. Most researchers agree that, since 1950, the number of hurricanes forming over the Atlantic has increased, and that since at least since 1980, they have become fiercer. Many studies have blamed the increase in Atlantic hurricanes on increasing sea-surface temperatures, which fuel the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will have warmer-than-normal temperatures this winter in most of the country, except for the northern Plains and Northwest states, government weather experts predicted on Tuesday. As for precipitation, it will be drier than average across the Southwest and the Southeast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected in its winter forecast. The Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, northern Rockies and Hawaii will be wetter than normal this winter, the agency predicted. NOAA also forecast a weak to moderate La Nina weather phenomenon, which is marked by unusually cold temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific, during...

WASHINGTON - "We have met the enemy, and he is us," the comic-strip character Pogo said decades ago. A new analysis of last year's near-record temperatures in the United States suggests he was right. Warming caused by human activity was the biggest factor in the high temperatures recorded in 2006, according to a report by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In January, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reported that 2006 was the warmest year on record over the 48 contiguous states with an average temperature 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal and 0.07 degree warmer than 1998,...

'More disasters' for warmer world A warmer world could make wildfires more frequent, research shows Rising temperatures will increase the risk of forest fires, droughts and flooding over the next two centuries, UK climate scientists have warned. Even if harmful emissions were cut now, many parts of the world would face a greater risk of natural disasters, a team from Bristol University said. The projections are based on data from more than 50 climate models looking at the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers gathered results from...

SEATTLE, March 31 (UPI) -- Testing by U.S. scientists finds that the Pacific Ocean is getting warmer and more acidic, while the amount of oxygen is decreasing. Scientists with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and the University of Washington say the ocean is becoming increasingly acidic because of its absorption of carbon dioxide, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Friday. "You don't have to believe in climate change to believe that this is happening," said Joanie Kleypas, an oceanographer with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a non-profit organization based in Boulder, Colo. "Acidification is more frightening than...

Northern N.E. winter shrinking, study saysNew England winters -- those storied, interminable seasons of yesteryear -- just aren't what they used to be. In fact, in northern New England, their duration may now be a week or two shorter than in the 1960s, according to the US Geological Survey. In a study to be published Friday in the Journal of Hydrology, scientists who examined historic river flow data report that spring has accelerated by one to two weeks in northern New England, though the trend is inconsistent in the southern part of the region. That may be tough news...