Environment

Obama addresses global warming summit

Boston.com | Foon Rhee | Nov. 18, 2008

Obama is pledging to make America more energy independent and to also slash carbon emissions by focusing on alternative sources such as wind and solar. He is also vowing to work more cooperatively with other nations on climate change.

“Few challenges facing America — and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change,” he says in the video. “The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season. Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security. [Read more…]

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Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof

National Post | Kelly McParland | Oct. 20, 2008

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures — they’re going down, not up. [Read more…]

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Alaska Glaciers Grew Fastest Since 1946

Anchorage Daily News | Craig Medred | Oct. 13, 2008

Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008. Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August. […]

Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind of snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too. [Read more…]

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Dangerous Pollution from China Threatening US Mainland

McClatchy Newspapers | Les Blumenthal | Aug. 29, 2008

Scientists fear impact of Asian pollutants on U.S. – From 500 miles in space, satellites track brown clouds of dust, soot and other toxic pollutants from China and elsewhere in Asia as they stream across the Pacific and take dead aim at the western U.S.

A fleet of tiny, specially equipped unmanned aerial vehicles, launched from an island in the East China Sea 700 or so miles downwind of Beijing , are flying through the projected paths of the pollution taking chemical samples and recording temperatures, humidity levels and sunlight intensity in the clouds of smog.

On the summit of 9,000-foot Mt. Bachelor in central Oregon and near sea level at Cheeka Peak on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula , monitors track the pollution as it arrives in America. [Read more…]

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Global Warning

FrontPageMag | David Solway | Jun. 5, 2008

No one doubts that the environment has been heating up; the controversy it has engendered has to do less with an indubitable fact than with isolating its supposed causes. The trouble is that the “science” involved is highly debatable insofar as it has been commandeered by a political crusade whose underlying purposes are distressingly suspicious. Some of the movement’s proponents, to put it bluntly, are more concerned with saving their wilting careers than saving the planet; others are building new careers at the expense of public credulity, the perks and salaries being just too good to give up. We might note that Mars is also warming at present, though it seems there are no SUVs chugging along the planet’s surface or light bulbs flicking on in its kilowatt communities. [Read more…]

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Globe may be cooling on Global Warming

ScrippsNews | Deroy Murdock | May. 1, 2008

Australia, the land where sinks drain the other way, has alerted Americans that we see Earth’s climate upside down: We’re not warming. We’re cooling.

“Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.” Dr. Phil Chapman wrote in The Australian on April 23. “All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.” [Read more…]

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More Carbon Dioxide, Please

NRO | Roy Spencer | May. 1, 2008

There seems to be an unwritten assumption among environmentalists — and among the media — that any influence humans have on nature is, by definition, bad. I even see it in scientific papers written by climate researchers. For instance, if we can measure some minute amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere at the South Pole, well removed from its human source, we are astonished at the far-reaching effects of mankind’s “pollution.”

But if nature was left undisturbed, would it be any happier and more peaceful? Would the carnivores stop eating those poor, defenseless herbivores, as well as each other? Would fish and other kinds of sea life stop infringing on the rights of others by feasting on them? Would there be no more droughts, hurricanes, floods, heat waves, tornadoes, or glaciers flowing toward the sea? [Read more…]

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