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Natural flood plains form where floods spread silt and mud in river valleys. Being flat, fertile, picturesque, and usually supplied with surface and underground water, they attract farms, orchards, and gardens. These are inevitably followed by roads, houses, and businesses. Despite the all the planners with their rules, the pressure of people plus a bit of corruption has always resulted in population clustering on fertile flood plains and deltas beside scenic rivers. There is no point trying to stop or reverse this tide of history, but those who choose to build on flood plains must bear the costs of the...

The United Nations has joined forces with former Vice President Al Gore to promote a sweeping environmental agenda that seems all too familiar: a “New Deal For Nature.” The U.N. is calling for a “New Deal For Nature” ahead of a biodiversity summit in 2020 where some sort of global compact is expected to be agreed to, that is, if environmentalists get their wish. This newest New Deal got a boost at the World Economic Forum (WEF) underway in Davos, Switzerland, at a dinner co-hosted with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The dinner featured a rousing speech by Gore as...

For some Northeast cities, high temperatures on Thanksgiving could be close to the coldest on record no matter what day of the month the holiday was celebrated (e.g. Nov. 22, Nov. 24, Nov. 26, etc.). The official U.S. Thanksgiving Day has been the last Thursday of November from 1863 to 1938; the next-to-last Thursday from 1939 to 1941; and the fourth Thursday from 1942 to present. New York City has only had three Thanksgivings dating to 1870 when the high temperature failed to rise out of the 20s, according to National Weather Service statistics. The coldest was a high of...

GENOA, Nev. — There are certain axioms about the natural world we learn as children. The sea is salty. Plants grow toward light. Bears hibernate in winter. But as climate change leads to warmer winters, later falls and earlier springs — which can disrupt both food supplies and biological rhythms — American black bears are changing their hibernation routines, scientists say. In some cases, bears are not hibernating at all, staying awake all winter. In others, bears are waking from their slumber too early. For every one degree Celsius that minimum temperatures increase in winter, bears hibernate for six fewer...

Just when you thought the Big Freeze couldn’t get any worse, here’s Al Gore to twist the knife. It’s bitter cold in parts of the US, but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis. https://t.co/6UfJ9Xxpq6 — Al Gore (@algore) January 4, 2018 Yep. Where others might see a crisis, Al Gore has spotted a Rahm-Emanuel-style opportunity to promote his renewables scam. This bitter cold, he wants you to know, isn’t a sign that his global warming theory is a busted flush. It’s a sign that he’s even more right than ever...

Something that never interferes with the climate change indoctrinators is facts. Since we are getting record cold, that is also caused by climate change and global warming, and that is caused by humans, according to these so-called "experts." From an article that made its way to USA Today: This week's cold snap has brought record-low temperatures, freezing rain and heavy snow to much of the United States. But 2017 is still on track to be the second- or third-hottest year ever recorded globally – and scientists say climate change is to blame[.] ... Even this week's cold weather is probably...

New legislation that restricts the Environmental Protection Agency from initiating some scientific studies will rein in frivolous research that was backed by the Obama administration, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, told Newsmax TV. "The intent . . . is to scrutinize regulations that have been promoted in the past by the previous administration," Smith, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, told Bill Tucker, guest host of Thursday's "The Steve Malzberg Show." "A lot of these regulations were not based upon good science. Sometimes the underlined so-called data that justifies these regulations didn't even exist. "Sometimes the...

Climate change is back in the news as President-Elect Donald Trump threatens to roll back much of the Obama climate agenda. The Obama administration added 229 major regulations at an additional annual cost of $108 billion, many of which involve energy policy. The "Clean Power Plan" is one such regulatory behemoth, jacking up the cost of energy under the guise of saving the planet from global warming. Of course, the left believes that Trump will mandate dirty air and water, encouraging pollution on a mass scale. After all, Republicans prefer living in a toxic waste dump world, exposing themselves and...

Probably the clearest point of ideological difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is “climate change.” One professes to agree with Al Gore that it’s a super-serial man-made problem. The other thinks it’s a joke. But these are more than just random positions adopted by maverick presidential candidates to please their more extreme voters. They are in fact expressions of one of the fundamental differences between the right and the left, which is reflected time and again in the polls: Conservatives, Libertarians and Republican voters are much, much more likely to think that man-made global warming is a problem than...

One of the main lines of evidence used by the Obama administration to justify its global warming regulations doesn’t exist in the real world, according to a new report by climate researchers. Researchers analyzed temperature observations from satellites, weather balloons, weather stations and buoys and found the so-called “tropical hotspot” relied upon by the EPA to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant “simply does not exist in the real world.” They found that once El Ninos are taken into account, “there is no ‘record setting’ warming to be concerned about.” “These analysis results would appear to leave very, very little doubt...

It shouldn't surprise us that the NOAA refuses to release data on how they reached the conclusion that the earth was, indeed, warming. It is the only study showing an increase in temps over the last 15 years, thus any debunking would be injurious to the climate change cause. Aside from the shocking arrogance in defying a subpoena from Congress, it's pretty obvious that the NOAA doesn't want to release the data because it will either show they cooked the books, or, as they've done in the past, misinterpreted the data. Smith can go to court, but by the time...

Blowing snow caused all kinds of travel problems in the mountains late Tuesday afternoon. U.S. 6 over Loveland Pass was closed because of poor weather conditions. Westbound I-70 at Vail Pass was closed for the same reason. Traffic was moving slowly throughout the I-70 corridor in the high country. The storm is good news for Loveland Ski Area, which opens Thursday morning.

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - A freak July cold front brought snow to the Northern Rockies on Monday in a rare weather event that set record-low daytime temperatures across Idaho and could see overnight readings at or near freezing in parts of the region, meteorologists said. The combination of moisture and cold air from Alaska and Canada was expected to settle over Idaho, Montana and Wyoming through Tuesday in a pattern rarely seen in those states before late August or September, forecasters with the National Weather Service said. More than an inch of snow was reported on Monday at the renowned...

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, late as usual, arrived in Rome Tuesday morning to pontificate at the Vatican about the dangers of climate change. Delayed by fog that forced his plane to land in Milan, de Blasio arrived 80 minutes after his allotted time to speak at the gathering of mayors invited by the Vatican. Once he was given time to speak, though, he waxed eloquent about “powerful corporate interests,” adding, “Is it not the definition of insanity to propagate corporate policies and consumer habits that hasten the destruction of the earth?”

How long will this country remain free? Probably only as long as the American people value their freedom enough to defend it. But how many people today can stop looking at their electronic devices long enough to even think about such things? Meanwhile, attempts to shut down people whose free speech interferes with other people’s political agendas go on, with remarkably little notice, much less outrage. The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting the tax-exempt status of conservative groups is just one of these attempts to fight political battles by shutting up the opposition, rather than answering them. Another insidious attempt to...

US temperatures through April 26 are third coldest on record, just barely behind 1899 and 1912. This week is forecast to be cold, and will likely push 2014 into the #1 spot.

Colorado may be known for its abundant sunshine, but employment in the solar energy sector is looking cloudy — solar industry jobs have declined by 32 percent since 2010, according to a newly released survey by the Solar Foundation. Colorado saw a zero percent increase in solar sector jobs from 2012-2013, while such jobs increased by nearly 20 percent nationwide. The high-profile bankruptcy of Abound Solar in 2012, which cost 400 jobs, could have something to do with those numbers, but solar advocacy organization Environment Colorado lays the blame on what could have potential longer-term effects on the market —...

President Barack Obama's first budget includes $15 billion a year for renewable energy programs and an ambitious plan to raise $646 billion from a carbon reduction proposal. "Because our future depends on our ability to break free from oil that's controlled by foreign dictators, we need to make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Mr. Obama said Thursday morning. "That's why we'll be working with Congress on legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy." The plan uses money from a cap-and-trade program — which would allow companies to...

President Obama will pledge Tuesday night that the nation "will rebuild, we will recover," as he delivers an address to a joint session of Congress and with a nervous nation watching at home. "While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," Mr. Obama will say, according to excerpts of his remarks. In lofty language, Mr. Obama is expected to promise a new path forward...

Barack Hussein Obama will propose a massive business tax on greenhouse gases in his FY 2010 federal budget to be presented this week.The massive tax increase and power grab was buried at the end on article on Obama's forthcoming budget proposal in The New York Times:On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020. Since companies would pass their...