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(VIDEO-AT-LINK) You could be forgiven for thinking the reason the world isn't doing nearly enough to fight climate change is that the American Ostrich Politicians are holding us back. You know these guys: Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush. These AOPs have their heads stuck so far in the sand that they aren't willing to see that climate change is real, that we're largely causing it -- and that failing to act puts the entire world at serious risk. But when I read Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment and climate change, I was struck by his mention of a...

Joe is doing a remote from Madison Wisconsin, so it's short and all about the rain in Texas.

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Tom Tamarkin.A recent NOAA article is just what Doctor Doom ordered. It claims the 18-year “hiatus” in rising planetary temperatures isn’t really happening. (The “pause” followed a 20-year modest temperature increase, which followed a prolonged cooling period.) The article states: “Here we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than reported by the IPCC, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half...

Joe Bastardi's take on weather and climate.

The Seal Team 6 of weather. Joe and Ryan predicted summer weather, US government just now catching up. AGW drought in Texas now AGW flood. Good Grief. MJO gaining a lot of amplitude, confirming El Nino. Rainfall way above normal, but Texas drying out as the storms moves east. More cool weather in center of country, moving east.

Floods on the Rio Blanco these past few days demonstrate the link to climate change, but not in the way you think. It was a horrible Memorial Day weekend in Hays County, Texas. At least three people died from the worst flooding seen since 1922. The Rio Blanco crested at 43 feet, 30 feet over flood stage. Over 400 homes were destroyed and the interstate (I-35) was under water. The flood warning posted on the San Marcos, Texas website identifies the areas of evacuation. One area is that in the Blanco Vista neighborhood nearest to the river. Police officers and...

A Memorial Day beach bash in Florida was shockingly cut short Monday when a waterspout made it’s way ashore and uprooted an inflatable bounce house, sending it — and the kids playing inside — soaring across a parking lot and into a roadway. Four children were injured, including one seriously, according to NBC Miami. They have all been rushed to a nearby hospital.

Weather experts from around the world began convening in Geneva on Monday for a congress where Swiss Interior Minister Alain Berset emphasized the need to reduce the impact of natural disasters and climate change. Organizers of the congress, held by the World Meteorological Organization once every four years, say it will focus on how to strengthen weather and climate services to meet the needs of a growing global population and to cope with climate variability and change, extreme weather and related shocks on all socio-economic sectors. "To ensure sustainable development, the global community needs reliable information on the state of...

Joe Bastardi vs. 0bama disaster du jour.

...after Hurricane Sandy bared down on New York, killing over 150 people and wreaking $65 billion in damage, federal leaders cried for help to make the Northeast more flood-proof. Dutch expert Henk Ovink answered..... ... there's good cause to be worried when the Dutch expert says there’s no place in worse shape today than Miami. He’s begun calling the city “the new Atlantis,” after the legendary and beautiful island subcontinent that was submerged by the sea in one night. “If we look around the world and take into account sea level rise and the increase of water related disasters, among...

Here’s how cynically anti-science the Warmunist lobby is. These people blame every single weather event, from earthquakes to winter storms, on Global Warming. Al Gore and others tried to claim that Global Warming was causing hurricanes. But the hurricanes weren’t showing up. Now the Warmunists could have attributed the pause to Global Warming. We’re talking about people who claim the rise of ISIS is caused by Global Warming. They clearly don’t have a problem attributing everything to the Warming Devil. But what scientific explanation is being credited for the pause? Luck. In a stroke of luck, no major hurricanes rated...

Short term forecast.Long explanation of current and future drought. The effect of oncoming El Nino on rain in California.

An El Niño pattern has been contributing to drought-busting rain in Texas and the southern Plains. California may be next up for much-needed rain during the winter of 2015-16. El Niño, which began during the past winter, occurs when ocean water temperatures climb above normal across the central and eastern Pacific, centered around the equator. According to AccuWeather Meteorologist Ben Noll, along with impacting weather patterns around the globe, an El Niño tends to bring significant rain to the southern part of the United States. "The pattern of El Niño strengthens the southern storm track across the U.S., especially during...

Hurricane outlook for summer. El Nino a "full blown" event, but no "super" El Nino. Global ice almost a full standard deviation above the mean.

The Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) announces today that the predicted new cold climate will soon begin to end the historic era of growth in US and global agricultural output that began after the end of World War II. Specifically, as a result of recent events on the Sun and changes in the Earth's climate, the SSRC again warns that record crop yields and volume in the US and Canadian corn, wheat, and soybean belts are about to end. The SSRC expects the first substantial damage could be observed at any time but certainly within the next ten years....

Another "Garden of Eden" summer for Texas and the plains states.

Near-term forecast and discussion of coming El Nino.

The early Greeks had a better, more basic understanding of weather and climate than the people involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Indeed, the word climate derives from the Greek word klima, meaning inclination, referring to the climate conditions created by the angle of the Sun. They paid great attention to the wind, realizing its role in creating local, regional and seasonal conditions. They even erected a tower to the wind in Athens (Figure 1) with sculptures representing each major compass direction. The Greeks focused on the more important horizontal movement of air, technically called advection or...

Hackers from China breached the federal weather network recently, forcing cybersecurity teams to seal off data vital to disaster planning, aviation, shipping and scores of other crucial uses, officials said. The intrusion occurred in late September but officials gave no indication that they had a problem until Oct. 20, according to three people familiar with the hack and the subsequent reaction by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service. Even then, NOAA did not say its systems were compromised.

In Saturday's weekly address, President Obama declared 2014 the "warmest year on record" and because of that, he furthered, "climate change can no longer be denied -- or ignored." "This winter was cold in parts of our country -- as some folks in Congress like to point out -- but around the world, it was the warmest ever recorded," Obama said. The result, he continued: stronger storms, deeper droughts, and longer wildfire seasons. And with a nod back to his recent statements about how climate change caused his daughter's asthma, Obama warned that the air kids breathe is dangerous.