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Whether, how, and why forest stands have changed their growth patterns over the last century are still hotly disputed questions The world’s great forests have long been recognized as the lungs of the earth. They fix carbon and produce oxygen. So it should come as a pleasant surprise to hear that there are over three trillion trees on earth, according to a new assessment. The figure is more than seven times as big as the previous best estimate, which counted perhaps 400 billion at most. It has been produced by Thomas Crowther and colleagues, from Yale University, who combined a...

Nature Devours all CO2 Equally Some scientists claim that anthropogenic (human-produced) CO2 (carbon dioxide) lasts in the atmosphere for hundreds or even thousands of years. Of course, they also think that CO2 is the mother of all evils and, therefore, argue that the world needs to decarbonize, forget about using fossil resources (coal, oil, gas), and reduce the population from seven billion to one billion humans. Well, if that’s so, the world must be suffering from CO2 exhalations by the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Romans, and everyone else who lived since that time. How much CO2 is in the Air? On...

A little late to the party: Somewhere in the murky mists of a future, which is fast becoming the present, Obama the Ice Man, Cometh. Polar bears will no longer be stranded on ice floes because the American government is sending the U.S. Coast Guard to the rescue in their very own icebreakers In fighting off Russia, which planted its flag under the Arctic sea bed back in 2007, the Obama administration is set to remove 3,000 troops from Alaska but will be building ice breakers ready to hit the water in 2020. Take that, Vladimir Putin, if the kind...

The DNC introduced to a reality TV trained world, a messiah with a bogus message of Hope and Change In a surrealistic world the pope’s coming to America is somewhat like Cleopatra coming to Mark Antony. Protocol and pomp and ceremony aside, why would Christ’s Vicar on Earth come to pay homage to a president who is unabashedly the world’s top champion of abortions, including partial birth abortions; whose party refuses to defund Planned Parenthood whose organization sells body parts of aborted babies on the black market; and whose presidency is driven by a soul-corroding hatred of the country he...

Judge Ralph Erickson of the District Court for the District of North Dakota granted plaintiffs an injunction against the Environmental Protection Agency's implementation of new navigable waterways regulations that were set for immediate enforcement. The EPA's new regulations would have extended its authority over every body of water within the United States including rain runoff, temporary puddles, and spillage from yard sprinklers and driveways where home owners wash their vehicles. The Judge observed that "it seems extremely improbable that the proposed EPA authority could conceivably apply to the so-called 'navigable waterways' described. As such, the 13 states suing the EPA...

Ten years later, the name ‘Brownie’ is still identified with the government’s failures. Here’s what really happened.Had I left the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the spring of 2005, my life would be very different today. And I really wish, in retrospect, that I had. But after the 2004 hurricane season, when FEMA’s excellent responses to hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne in Florida were widely praised, White House chief of staff Andy Card persuaded me to stay on as director through the 2005 hurricane season. I didn’t want to disappoint President George W. Bush. We’d developed a good relationship....

Predation by another species is the number one cause of extinction Willis Eschenbach, who takes pride in saying that he is not a trained scientist but has logged thousands of hours of research on the subject, was the first person to file a FOIA request for the infamous data from the University of East Anglia CRU. Hackers downloaded emails from said university that had shown that scientists had manipulated the data to agree with the global warming theory. Eschenbach lectured an audience in California about the “Myth of Species Extinction,” more specifically, the legend that humans have caused the disappearance...

Strange blue lights glowing on the edge of space first appeared over polar regions in 1885 and today, sightings are becoming increasingly common, and now the phenomenon is moving into lower latitudes including Northern California. Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, these glowing space clouds may be a celestial siren, warning of Earth's global warming, according to some scientists. They're called "noctilucent clouds" or NLCs, basically, clouds that glow at night. They appear mainly in northern latitudes, about 50 miles above earth as miniscule droplets of water reflect the sun on the other side of the globe. Now,...

The electrifying image took social media by storm: As of Aug. 14, Greg McCown's photo had garnered more than 1,000 Facebook likes and more than 3,600 retweets. There's a reason why it went viral: Those types of sightings are incredibly rare. Although 100 lighting bolts strike the Earth every second, the chances of them flashing near a rainbow are slim, said Randall Cerveny, a professor of meteorology at Arizona State University in Tucson. "Usually, you don't get those two things to line up at the same time," Cerveny said, adding that a desert area like Tucson is more likely...

The people that just accidentally released millions of gallons of toxic materials into a Colorado River have come up with another brilliant plan to combat global warming. […] The Obama Administration has awarded $8 Million in government grants to nine universities to study the impact that climate change has on indoor air quality. The EPA defends the move by claiming that climate change’s effects on indoor air pollutants that lead to asthma, as well as mold and mildew, aren’t well understood. …

Real Science vs. government funded pseudo science: Several presentations at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in Ontario, California, dealt with the issues of anthropogenic global warming promoted by the climate change industry. Dr. S. Fred Singer, founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), and Ken Haapala, current president of SEPP, discussed the “National Environment Assessment: Peeling the Speculative Onion.” Haapala spoke of “climate fears and finance” and our government’s limitations on CO2 emissions as a “policy in search of a problem.” Because the global warming (climate change) predictions have proven inaccurate, the fear of non-existent anthropogenic global warming...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has stated that he doesn’t believe in the science behind global warming. In a forum hosted by Freedom Partners on Sunday evening, a key cog in the political network of the Koch Brothers, the Texas senator stated that “the data and facts don’t support” that global warming is occurring. The moderator of the forum described Cruz’s stance as “full out denial”. The Texas senator did not disagree with that characterisation. Cruz has previously compared those who believe in global warming to “flat-Earthers.” Cruz also criticised the new regulations, set to be unveiled by the Obama...

I used to think there was a consensus among government-funded certified climate scientists, but a better study by Verheggen et al shows even that is not true. The “97% consensus” is now 43%. Finally there is a decent survey on the topic, and it shows that less than half of what we would call “climate scientists” who research the topic and for the most part, publish in the peer reviewed literature, would agree with the IPCC’s main conclusions. Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “95%” certainty..

Sun gleaming off radical jihadist's AK-47 is a real threat... A friend sends the heads up to be on the alert for a new term being put into use by the busy as beavers climate change fraudsters: The newly minted term du jour is: ‘Climate Security’. (Financial Times, July 27, 2015) It would help more than anything if the global warming/climate change shysters could get the masses to believe that that they need protection from the weather and that they are the only ones that can provide it. As the weather guy warns every summer: ‘Don’t go out there, you...

In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels. The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop...

On Sept. 19, 2014, the five-day average of Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 20 million square kilometers for the first time since 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The red line shows the average maximum extent from 1979-2014. Credits: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Cindy Starr Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the...

Have you heard the news? Scientists have found a planet that can support life. Its atmosphere is too hot for year-round habitation, its gases impede breathing, and surface conditions are sometimes fatal. But by constructing a network of sealed facilities, tunnels, and vehicles, humans could survive on this planet for decades and perhaps even centuries. The planet is called Earth. Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right. If you've seen this planet lately, you know what's going on: temperature records shattering, scores of Americans dead. By summer's end, the...

For much of my life I have been a science writer. That means I eavesdrop on what’s going on in laboratories so I can tell interesting stories. It’s analogous to the way art critics write about art, but with a difference: we “science critics” rarely criticise. If we think a scientific paper is dumb, we just ignore it. There’s too much good stuff coming out of science to waste time knocking the bad stuff. Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is...

“Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” artists Jane, as in Fonda and David, as in Suzuki are having a great day. As CTVnews reports, they are rejoicing in a rally “aimed at bringing attention to climate change, employment and justice issues in Canada”, also known as the “climate rally.” In case you were unaware, the people on this continent need some reminding, especially by “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” artists, like Jane or David. The news report also says “The rally will consist of a rare coalition of non-profit organizations and activist groups, including a variety [of] labour unions, Greenpeace, Idle No More and religious organizations.” Non-Profit Organizations There...

UPDATE: 6:45 a.m. Monday: The Cape Horn Fire is now estimated to be around 2,000 acres. Crews have confirmed six homes have been destroyed, all on the eastern half of Cape Horn and containment is 0%. The fire spread rapidly overnight and evacuations have been issued by the Bonner County Sheriff's Office in the Cape Horn and Bayview areas using reverse 911.