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year after Hurricane Katrina and other major storms battered the U.S. coast, the question of whether hurricanes are becoming more destructive because of global warming has become perhaps the most hotly contested question in the scientific debate over climate change. Academics have published a flurry of papers either supporting or debunking the idea that warmer temperatures linked to human activity are fueling more intense storms. The issue remains unresolved, but it has acquired a political potency that has made both sides heavily invested in the outcome.Paradoxically, the calm hurricane season in the Atlantic so far this year has only intensified...

An expert with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is questioning the connection between climate change and the appearance of more intense hurricanes in recent years. Historical data on hurricanes is too crude to determine long-term trends in intensity, says Christopher Landsea, a science and operations officer with NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. Extreme hurricanes like Katrina were likely as common around the world 30 years ago as they are today, Landsea says. But since satellite imagery was poorer, storm intensities were underreported. Landsea is the lead author of a commentary in today's issue of the...

Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth. Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual - but a mini ice age could soon follow. The sun provides all the energy that drives our climate, but it is not the constant star it might seem. Careful studies over the last 20 years show that its overall brightness and energy output increases slightly as sunspot activity rises to the peak...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/antarctic_020822.html Antarctic Sea Ice Increases over Past Two Decades By SPACE.com Staff 22 August 2002 In a surprising departure from other findings that point to a warming planet, a NASA researcher has found that the amount of ice in the Antarctic increased from 1979 to 1999, as measured by satellites. Many recent findings have detailed the decline of the ice cap in the Arctic, at the top of the world. These new results from the Southern Hemisphere imply that global climate change involves regional variations. Changes in ice cover are important not only because they indicate temperature changes that have...

The Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute (formerly the Free Market Project) conducted an extensive analysis of print media’s climate change coverage back to the late 1800s. It found that many publications now claiming the world is on the brink of a global warming disaster said the same about an impending ice age – just 30 years ago. Several major ones, including The New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek, have reported on three or even four different climate shifts since 1895. In addition, BMI found: * “Global Cooling” Was Just as Realistic: Several publications warned in the 1970s...

TIME MAGAZINE -1974LINK TO 1974 ARTICLEIn Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced...

To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that island land, which is depicted so ominously in Gore’s movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming. They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and...

EVERYBODY knows Republicans don't care about global warming. But here's some surprising news: Neither do Democrats. That's the finding of a poll out this week from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a survey of more than 1,500 U.S. adults last month. Pew found a huge partisan gap in how Americans perceive whether global warming exists and whether it's caused by humans, with Democrats tending to think it's real and man-made, and Republicans less convinced. Yet, when asked to rate a selection of 19 national issues by importance, that gap looks less significant: Republicans ranked global...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1810738,00.html Climate change can wait. World health can't With $50bn, we could make the planet a better place but money spent on global warming would be wasted Bjorn Lomborg Sunday July 2, 2006 The Observer A city council has a £10m surplus, which it wants to allocate to a good cause. Ten groups clamour for the cash. One wants to buy new computers for an inner-city school. Another hopes to beautify a park. Each puts a persuasive case for the benefits they could achieve. What should the councillors do? The straightforward answer might seem to be to divide the cash...

According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms -- unless we change the way we live now. Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And why not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific community is...

"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?

National Weather Service Tallahassee FL 855 am EDT Jun 7 2006 ... Record low temperature shattered at Tallahassee Florida!... AR 6:51 am EDT this morning... the temperature at the Tallahassee Regional Airport dropped to 54 degrees. This obliterates the old record low of 57 degrees set in 1991

WASHINGTON - Another reason to worry about global warming: more and itchier poison ivy. The noxious vine grows faster and bigger as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, researchers report Monday...

Reduced air pollution and increased water evaporation appear to be adding to man-made global warming. Research presented at a major European science meeting adds to other evidence that cleaner air is letting more solar energy through to the Earth's surface. Other studies show that increased water vapour in the atmosphere is reinforcing the impact of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists suggest both trends may push temperatures higher than believed. But they say there is an urgent need for further research, particularly at sea. Dimming no more Between the 1950s and 1980s, the amount of solar energy penetrating through the atmosphere...

As the first anniversary of the global warming treaty, also known as the Kyoto Protocol, has come and gone, a steady stream of stories from the mainstream media continues to reinforce the notion that global warming is indeed a real phenomenon that is significantly caused by human activity and exacerbated by U.S. refusal to sign on to Kyoto. Our media have let it be known in no uncertain terms that scientists who oppose this "consensus" are either bought and paid for by oil companies or ignorant of the facts and evidence. What's more, they are not worth paying any attention...

TCS Daily Antarctic Ice: The Cold Truth Font Size: By Dr. Patrick Michaels : BIO | 03 Mar 2006 This week Science Magazine's on-line SciencExpress reports that Antarctica has been losing large amounts of ice mass over the past three years, contributing to sea level rise at a rate of 0.4 ± 0.2 mm/year. This comes on the heels of a paper published by Science two weeks ago that reported that Greenland was also losing big chunks of ice and contributing to sea level rise at a rate of 0.57 mm/yr. If this sounds like one of those repeating news...

Introduction The period 1812-1817 was one of exceptional volcanic activity, and the sheer volume of volcanic dust pumped into the atmosphere by these volcanic eruptions caused a general, temporary cooling in the earth’s climate around this time. This temporary climatic cooling peaked during the summer of 1816 was the peak of this cooling and the reason the peak fell in the summer of 1816 is almost certainly die to the eruption of the Tamboro volcano east of Java in April 1815 (believed to be one of the most explosive eruptions of the last 10,000 years). At the time sunspots were...

UTRECHT, Netherlands, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Dutch researcher Michiel Helsen says Antarctica temperature fluctuations are not being accurately recorded in the composition of the snow of Antarctica. The Utrecht University scientist says his research into the isotopic composition of the Antarctic snow has exposed the complexity of climate reconstructions. Polar ice caps contain valuable information about the earth's climate. Helsen investigated the extent to which meteorological data are stored in the composition of snow in order to improve the interpretation of deep ice cores from the Antarctic ice cap. He demonstrated annual temperature variations in Antarctica could not be accurately...

Scientists Warn of Melting Ice in Arctic By DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 47 minutes ago ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Scientists on Monday painted a gloomy picture of the effects of global warming on the Arctic, warning of melting ocean ice, rising oceans, thawed permafrost and forests susceptible to bugs and fire. "A lot of the stories you read make it sound like there's uncertainty," said Jonathan Overpeck, a professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona. "There's not uncertainty." The questions scientists continue to address, he said after his presentation at the Alaska Forum on the Environment, are...

ST. PETERSBURG, February 6 (RIA Novosti) - Low solar activity could trigger a global freeze in the middle of the 21st century, a Russian astronomer said Monday. Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomic Observatory said temperatures would begin falling six or seven years from now, when global warming caused by increased solar activity in the 20th century reached its peak, and that the coldest period would occur 15-20 years after a major solar output decline in 2035-2045. Abdusamatov said dramatic changes in the earth's surface temperatures were an ordinary phenomenon, not an anomaly, and resulted from variations in the Sun's...