Free Republic

Climate skepticism is just bad science: "There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming" At some point in the history of all scientific theories, only a minority of scientists-or even just one-supported them, before evidence accumulated to the point of general acceptance. The Copernican model, germ theory, the vaccination principle, evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and the big bang theory were all once heretical ideas that became consensus science. How did this happen? An answer may be found in what 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell called a 'consilience of inductions." For a theory to be accepted, Whewell...

A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month. A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science. He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly. He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much...

For people who hate cold weather, the forecast for the next couple of weeks is bad news. Waves of frigid air invading the U.S. will become progressively colder and more widespread, with the worst coming in the third week of January. Many people in the East will get a slight taste of the colder air this weekend before more substantial cold takes hold from coast to coast next week. This upcoming cold weather pattern could yield snow or ice in places that don't often get it. Seattle, Wash., Portland, Ore., Dallas, Texas, Memphis, Tenn., and Charlotte, N.C., are all in...

Cape Wind has outlasted a decade of government review, a slew of court brawls and fierce opposition from mariners, fishermen, Indian tribes and Kennedys just to win the right to sell its wind-fueled electricity. Now, all it needs are customers.

It's high time we recognize that carbon dioxide has been treated unfairly. Not only have the good deeds of that wonderful molecule so essential to rain forests, begonias and plants that feed God's creatures been ignored, it has even come to be demonized as an endangering pollutant and climate-ravaging menace. What real evidence has been offered up to support these defamatory charges? Absolutely none. Take the EPA's CO-2 endangerment finding, for example. Shrouded under the ever- expanding blanket of the Clean Air Act, it is being applied to validate an unprecedented regulatory takeover of carbon-emitting energy and construction industry permitting....

This is a response to "Why Can't We Innovate Our Way To A Carbon-Free Energy Future?", a "Perspective" by Bjorn Lomborg that ran in this space a week ago. Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It," is right about the need to focus on critical health and economic priorities. But he is wrong about human carbon dioxide emissions causing what is now being called "global climate disruption." By demonizing the gas of life, in league with Al Gore and Bill Gates, Lomborg commits several serious scientific errors. As independent scientists, with broad training in mathematics, physics, chemistry,...

Ice cores reveal that CO2 levels rise and fall hundreds of years after temperatures changeIn 1985, ice cores extracted from Greenland revealed temperatures and CO2 levels going back 150,000 years. Temperature and CO2 seemed locked together. It was a turning point—the “greenhouse effect” captured attention. But in 1999 it became clear carbon rose and fell after temperatures did. By 2003 we had better data showing the lag was 800 ± 200 years. CO2 was in the back seat.AGW replies: There is roughly an 800-year lag. But even if CO2 doesn’t start the warming trend, it amplifies it.Skeptics say: If CO2...