Free Republic

It is, for our home planet, an extremely warm year. Indeed, last week we learned from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the first eight months of 2015 were the hottest such stretch yet recorded for the globe’s surface land and oceans, based on temperature records going back to 1880. It’s just the latest evidence that we are, indeed, on course for a record-breaking warm year in 2015. Yet, if you look closely, there’s one part of the planet that is bucking the trend. In the North Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland and Iceland, the ocean surface has seen...

The cover of the Aug.13, 2007, issue of Newsweek sports a very active sun with the title "Global Warming is a Hoax." But the cover story is not about how the man-caused global warming hysteria is a hoax. Oh, no, it is just the opposite. It is a diatribe about how those who are skeptical about man's influence on climate are denying the truth and are undermining true science.

That the Gulf Stream is responsible for Europe's mild winters is widely known and accepted, but...it is nothing more than the earth-science equivalent of an urban legend... The countries of northern Europe do indeed have curiously mild climates...why do so many people credit the Gulf Stream? Like many other myths, this one rests on a strand of truth. The Gulf Stream carries with it considerable heat when it flows out from the Gulf of Mexico and then north along the East Coast before departing U.S. waters at Cape Hatteras and heading northeast toward Europe. All along the way, it warms...