Free Republic

"The value of truth is one of the most central values in America, and this administration has violated it," Kerry said in an interview with The Washington Post aboard his plane. "Their values system is distorted and not based on truth." In the world of politics when a candidate makes such harsh criticism of his opponent’s honesty, you can bet they themselves are guilty of the very violation they accuse their opponent. In the case of John F. Kerry, the violation he speaks of are not only his own, almost daily violation, but also those who claim to be witness...

A whole town is frozen solid in Newfoundland, the Great Lakes are sheets of ice, snow is still piled up on Toronto streets, Britain has been caught in a deep freeze, Europeans shivered through January, thousands died in Russia from the cold, rice paddies have turned into skating rinks in Southeast Asia, people are dying from the cold in Bangladesh, parts of China's Yellow River have frozen over. What's going on? Nothing much, actually. It's just the weather. But these days the weather, hot and cold, is a political issue, and that means you can't let erratic weather go by...

The Blizzard Of '03 Reduces Visibility On Global Warming By PAUL K. DRIESSEN The monstrous snow storm that dumped up to 40 inches of snow on mid-Atlantic states over the Presidents' Day weekend undoubtedly will unleash a new spate of blizzards on op-ed pages blaming it on the eco-activists favorite old bugaboo — global warming. That's as predictable as French hypocrisy in diplomatic relations, of course, and perhaps we should merely shrug it off. But as much is at stake in the ongoing debate over global warning and what to do about it as there is in the current dispute...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had better check its calculations AT THE beginning of 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released, as the main result of its massive Third Assessment Review, a set of figures that have become the most-cited numbers in the field of environmental policy, and quite possibly the most-cited numbers in any field of public policy. The panel, whose task was to assess the extent to which emissions of greenhouse gases may warm the planet over the coming century, reported that “globally averaged mean surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8°C...

The Lomborg Inquisition by Helene Guldberg Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg first made world headlines back in 2001, with the publication of his book The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. In painstaking statistical detail, The Skeptical Environmentalist challenged widely accepted claims made by environmentalists about overpopulation, global warming, energy, deforestation, water shortages, species extinction and many other green concerns. Lomborg's work has been acclaimed by many. But the campaign to discredit Lomborg himself has gone unabated. From having pies thrown in his face by green campaigners at book launches, to having his arguments compared with Holocaust denial...

Baltic Sea has most extensive ice cover in decades Icebreakers work hard to keep up with situation Thanks to the cold weather of recent weeks, the ice cover along the Finnish coasts is more extensive than in decades. Experts say that the whole Baltic Sea could freeze over all the way to the Straits of Denmark, for the first time since 1948. "This is going to be a rough winter. Not even the occasional milder spells will necessarily help", says Ari Seinä, head of the ice service of the Finnish Institute of Marine Research. In addition to covering an unusually...

Predictions fall foul of reality By Robert Matthews (Filed: 12/01/2003) Commuters shivering in last week's bitterly cold weather could be forgiven for wondering whatever happened to global warming. The whole northern hemisphere, from Florida to Finland, Germany to Japan, was in the grip of a cold snap that seemed more in line with a new Ice Age. Aid agencies in Bangladesh handed out blankets to stem the toll of cold-related deaths, which has already topped 100. In Vietnam, baffled villagers came out to study the inch-thick layer of odd, cold white stuff that was blanketing the countryside. In China, a...

Fifty Years of Pan Evaporation and Solar Radiation Data: What Do They Tell Us About Climate Change? Reference Roderick, M.L. and Farquhar, G.D.  2002.  The cause of decreased pan evaporation over the past 50 years.  Science 298: 1410-1411. Background "As the average global temperature increases," say the authors, "it is generally expected that the air will become drier and that evaporation from terrestrial water bodies will increase."  However, as they continue, "terrestrial observations over the past 50 years [when they assume the planet warmed by ~0.15°C] show the reverse."  Hence, they set out to explain this seeming "paradox." What...