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Apocalypse now? The end of the world is going down in just two weeks — at least if a certain dystopian study is to be believed. In a 1960 study in the journal Science, University of Illinois physicist Heinz von Foerster forecast that Doomsday would occur on November 13, 2026 (fittingly, Friday the 13th!) The Austrian-American scientist specifically believed that our population would increase exponentially to infinity. But rather than dying of starvation — the prevailing fear at the time — von Foerster believed the boom would culminate in a massive crowd crush of sorts. “At this date human population...

King Tides are a seasonal recurrence. Also seasonal in recent years are the attempts to explain the flooding caused by those tides as being due to rising sea levels. Among the media outlets at the forefront this year with the rising sea levels shtick is USA Today as you can see in this Monday story by their Climate & Environment correspondent Dinah Voyles Pulver, "Record high tides slam US coasts. Here’s what’s driving them."Most of what Pulver says is "driving" the high tides makes sense:

Precipitation monitors recorded more than seven times normal rainfall in parts of southeastern Utah over the past month, driving a dramatic rise in Lake Powell and transforming the San Juan River. ... SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — A month of extraordinary rainfall across southeastern Utah has sent water pouring into Lake Powell, lifting the reservoir's elevation by nearly 10 feet and turning the normally placid San Juan River into a raging torrent. Precipitation monitors in Bluff and at the Hans Flat Ranger Station tell the story. While southwestern and northern Utah received about twice their normal precipitation over the last...

An off-the-charts Super El Niño that’s expected to peak this winter could be oddly good for New York City — while other parts of the US may be slammed by storms and flooding, forecasters said Thursday. The “behemoth” weather system — measured by sea surface temperatures — could rise to more than six times that of a typical El Niño between November and January, according to the World Meteorological Organization. “This is literally off the monitoring charts that we have used for the past four decades,” Celeste Saulo, secretary of the WMO, said Wednesday. In the Big Apple, it could...

We finally had our first hurricane this season in the North Atlantic region: Isaias. Isaias formed on October 7 as a tropical storm in the Gulf of America, and made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on October 10 near Destin, Florida. Paul Homewood of Not a Lot of People Know That collects the relevant data in a post from October 11. Homewood notes that Isaias represents the latest ever first hurricane for the North Atlantic, at least since the satellite era (1966) has provided full data: Isaiah was the first Atlantic hurricane of the season, the latest on record....

A New Hampshire fisherman caught the state’s largest bluefin tuna weighing over 1,100 pounds — smashing a record that had stood for more than a decade. Brandon McGirl was hoping to reel in anything when he boarded the Out of Line, a Savage Charters NH boat captained by Jamie Savage, on Saturday for an overnight fishing trip out of Rye Harbor on the New Hampshire Seacoast, WMUR reported. “It was very difficult conditions to try and fish. It was a little bit rougher than we were hoping for,” McGirl told the outlet. The crew chased the fish for about a...

My September 29 post asked whether we could deem as “definitively falsified” the hypothesis that human-caused global warming was leading to “more and more severe” hurricanes. The cited basis for the question was that, despite the endlessly repeated prediction of “more and more severe” hurricanes, as of that date not a single hurricane had yet formed this season in the North Atlantic basin. This represented a record-low rate of hurricane formation in this region since the satellite era, and comprehensive hurricane data, began in 1966. (Since that post, five more days have passed, and there is still no hurricane in...

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NEW YORK CITY - A powerful, intensifying nor'easter is pounding the Northeast this weekend, putting over 40 million Americans in its path and prompting states of emergency across the region. A powerful weather system is bringing heavy rainfall, damaging winds, and widespread coastal flooding across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Officials advise residents to stay off the roads and remain indoors if possible. With the storm forecast to stall just off the coast of Long Island, persistent onshore winds, heavy rain bands, and exceptionally high tides are combining to threaten widespread coastal inundation, dangerous surf, and severe beach erosion...

🏆 WE DID IT! 🏆 For the first time since 1914, there have been no North Atlantic hurricane formations by September 21st. Fay did not attain hurricane strength overnight, and has since weakened, with maximum sustained wind speeds dropping from 70 to 50 mph. Weakening is expected to continue over the next couple of days. No other storm formations are expected for at least the next seven days (but that can change). The only other two times that this has happened since 1851 were in 1905 (October 8th) and 1907, respectively, and like 1914, the 1907 season featured no Atlantic...

".... The Kelvin Wave causing the ocean rise is “fanning” northward and will reach waters off the California Coast during the month of September raising sea level from about 6 inches above normal (now) to 12-13 inches above normal later this month. The ocean rise is accompanied by additional warming."

Setting aside years with late first hurricanes, only two years on record before weather satellites had no hurricanes at all: 1907 and 1914. ======================================================================= The Atlantic has had no hurricanes so far in its 2026 season, with weather experts blaming the situation on El Niño, disruptive wind shear, dry air and Saharan dust, AccuWeather.doc reports Monday. However, forecasters are monitoring a zone near the United States that might have the potential for a tropical development in the coming weeks. The Atlantic hurricane season is from June 1 to Nov. 30. Setting aside years with late first hurricanes, only two years...

The newly identified atmospheric wave appears to be strengthening, giving scientists a rare chance to watch an unusual feature develop on Saturn. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a giant 10-sided pattern encircling Saturn's south pole, giving scientists a rare opportunity to watch an unusual feature develop on another planet. The unusual pattern is actually a huge atmospheric wave embedded in one of Saturn's powerful jet streams. It extends through multiple layers of the atmosphere, showing that it is more than a cloud-level feature. The discovery marks the first time that a large pattern with regular sides has been observed...

A chunk of the Kennedy Center’s ceiling collapsed after a vicious storm plowed through Washington DC, leading a spokesperson to call it another “urgent” reason why the performing arts center needs to be overhauled. Debris was scattered on the building’s red carpet in its Grand Foyer, images of the damage online revealed. Kennedy Center spokesman Roma Daravai said it was “another example of the urgent need to close for renovation and revitalization, as our Chairman President Trump has championed.” She said the failure comes from “decades of neglect and deferred maintenance by the previous leadership” — and called the building...

American author Mark Twain famously stated: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Likewise, digging deeper into data sometimes reveals a different picture from what you saw at first glance. After combing through reports from more than 1,200 weather stations across the United States, former University of Alabama climatologist John Christy is challenging a commonly held belief that extreme high temperatures have become more prevalent. According to his report, published this spring in the academic journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology, the data don’t show an increase...

The devastating flash flood that has ripped through the border communities of Nepal and Tibet has heightened fears that the climate crisis is destabilising the geology of mountain and polar regions, threatening millions of people. Satellite imagery suggests a glacier collapse high in the Himalayas was the primary cause of the deadly torrent of mud, water and ice that tore along the Bhotekoshi River on Wednesday. It swept away buildings and roads and left at least 360 dead and 1,400 missing. A magnitude 4.4 earthquake was initially blamed for the collapse. However, it is now thought to have been caused...

What a difference a few years make. Not long ago, politicians said climate change was going to kill us, so we must move to “net zero” emissions. This is theoretically possible: Since vegetation removes carbon, we could get to net zero by burning fewer fossil fuels. Governments everywhere pledged to do just that. President Joe Biden and European leaders promised “net zero by 2050.” For a while, it seemed like it might happen. Spain invested billions in its solar-power grid; Germany claimed to get most of its power from renewables. But now they realize that they made a mistake. European...

The news this past week has been filled by Rand Paul’s Senate hearings exposing the extent of the scientific fraud perpetrated by ex-NIAID Director Anthony Fauci in the matter of Covid-19. First Paul released Fauci’s “diaries,” otherwise known as personal musings recorded in various places on the government’s servers. Then Fauci was compelled to testify, whereupon he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege more than 100 times and never provided a word of substantive testimony. However, the diaries on their face revealed numerous instances where Fauci’s public statements were blatant deceptions. As just one example, on January 20, 2020, Fauci wrote...

Insurance company Lloyd’s of London has announced its exit from a net-zero alliance for insurers—the sixth such organization to have pulled out from the initiative within a week. The Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), convened by the United Nations, seeks to commit group members, composed of the world’s leading insurers and reinsurers, to fighting climate change. As part of this, members have to transition their insurance and reinsurance underwriting portfolios to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. On Friday, Lloyd’s of London quit the NZIA. This took the total number of members who have quit NZIA this week alone to...

Much of the U.S. and Europe have been facing record high temperatures and relentless heat domes this summer, but the Earth’s most southern continent just recorded a new low temperature. On July 18, Concordia Station in Antarctica hit minus 119 degrees. This is the lowest temperature recorded on Earth since 2012, per The Weather Channel. It is also within a half degree of Concordia’s all-time low temperature. While we are facing a hot, sweaty summer — Salt Lake City experienced its hottest day on record on July 12 when temperatures reached 109 degrees — Antarctica is in the dead of...