By John Hayward

In response to Hillary Clinton Does ‘Hard Hitting’ Climate Change Interview With Hollywood Actor:

You know the global-warming fanatics have hit a low point when they’re reduced to asking Benghazi Rodham Clinton and an antique actor to shovel their silly propaganda.

One more time, for the benefit of anyone who remains honestly bamboozled by this nonsense: THERE IS NO CLIMATE CHANGE. None of the doomsday predictions, from blatant frauds like Michael Mann’s “hockey stick graph” to relatively serious efforts at climate modeling, have held up. There’s hard data now, and the hard data is disastrous for these fanatics and their anti-growth ideology. Climate scientists are currently spending their days fretting about a bit of global cooling, caused entirely by natural forces, and wondering if a tiny bit of heating from human activity might have been beneficial because it staved off the new Ice Age.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

“Hey, let’s put them on every school.”

By Jim Hoft

When Webster Groves High School purchased solar panels to put on the roof of the school, no one told them they could catch on fire!
The fire department was called on Saturday to put out the flames. At least one classroom was severely damaged.

There will be school on Monday.
(KMOV)

Read the rest at Gateway Pundit.

Published May 14, 2013, Associated Press

CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo. –  The Obama  administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind farm for killing eagles and  other protected bird species, shielding the industry from liability and helping  keep the scope of the deaths secret, an Associated Press investigation has  found.

More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year,  including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to  an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society  Bulletin.

Each death is federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used  to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power  companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines. No wind energy  company has been prosecuted, even those that repeatedly flout the law.

Read more at Fox News

By Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer

Of all of the world’s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.

The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a “pollutant” in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants.

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal.

By Oleg Nekhai

Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless. Some experts warn that a change in the climate may affect the ambitious projects for the exploration of the Arctic that have been launched by many countries.

Just recently, experts said that the Arctic ice cover was becoming thinner while journalists warned that the oncoming global warming would make it possible to grow oranges in the north of Siberia. Now, they say a cold spell will set in. Apparently, this will not occur overnight, Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory, says.

“Journalists say the entire process is very simple: once solar activity declines, the temperature drops. But besides solar activity, the climate is influenced by other factors, including the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the ocean, the glaciers. The share of solar activity in climate change is only 20%. This means that sun’s activity could trigger certain changes whereas the actual climate changing process takes place on the Earth.”

Solar activity follows different cycles, including an 11-year cycle, a 90-year cycle and a 200-year cycle. Yuri Nagovitsyn comments.

“Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years. The period of low solar activity could start in 2030-2040 but it won’t be as pervasive as in the late 17th century.”

Read the rest at The Voice of Russia.

By Pete Kasperowicz

Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to recognize that climate change is hurting women more than men, and could even drive poor women to “transactional sex” for survival.

The Resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.

Read the rest at The Hill.

According to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), 2013 brought us the second latest start to spring spring in US history. The only recorded year in which the beginning of spring was colder was 1975. Probably not coincidentally, it was in April of 1975 when Newsweek published its infamous “The Cooling World” feature.

See the NOAA data at Real Science.

Ira Einhorn preached against Vietnam War and violence, but had dark side

By Remy Melina

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the “composted” body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

A self-proclaimed environmental activist, Einhorn made a name for himself among ecological groups during the 1960s and ’70s by taking on the role of a tie-dye-wearing ecological guru and Philadelphia’s head hippie. With his long beard and gap-toothed smile, Einhorn — who nicknamed himself  “Unicorn” because his German-Jewish last name translates to “one horn”  — advocated flower power, peace and free love to his fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. He also claimed to have helped found Earth Day.

But the charismatic spokesman who helped bring awareness to environmental issues and preached against the Vietnam War — and any violence — had a secret dark side. When his girlfriend of five years, Helen “Holly” Maddux, moved to New York and broke up with him, Einhorn threatened that he would throw her left-behind personal belongings onto the street if she didn’t come back to pick them up.

And so on Sept. 9, 1977, Maddux went back to the apartment that she and Einhorn had shared in Philadelphia to collect her things, and was never seen again.

Read the rest at NBC News.

Learn more about Ira Einhorn (aka the Unicorn) in the book,  The Unicorn’s Secret (Onyx)

By Thomas P. Sheahen

Earth Day is here again, but few people seem interested any more in global warming. It’s plausible to inquire whether people realize we’ve got a duty to protect the environment. Actually, “protecting the environment” is not necessarily the same topic as “global warming.” Confusion about the two needs to be cleared up.

The earliest written indication that mankind is responsible for taking care of the earth is probably in the Bible, in Genesis 1 (v. 26-28) where God gives mankind dominion over everything else. Thus began the notion of stewardship, that we are responsible for properly using all things on earth.

For thousands of years the prevailing attitude was that the earth was huge and unlimited, so if you messed things up in one place you’d just move on.  Certainly the settlement of the American west displayed that mentality. But later in the 19th century people saw the damage and became conscious of the need to preserve some of nature’s beauty, and National Parks became established.

By the mid-20th  century incidents of major pollution were becoming too frequent, and some tragedies occurred (example: in London England in 1952, thousands died from air fouled by burning soft, high-sulfur coal). A new word, smog, entered the vocabulary as polluted air in cities like Los Angeles burned the eyes. Within 25 miles of a paper mill, it really stunk. Still, “The Environment” didn’t mean enough to motivate changing. “The price of progress” was the standard excuse.

Then in 1968 came the flight around the moon by Apollo 8, which returned the photo of the earth hanging like a bright blue marble against the backdrop of the vast emptiness of space.

Read the rest at the American Thinker.

By: By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

(Reuters) – Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

Getting this right is essential for the short and long-term planning of governments and businesses ranging from energy to construction, from agriculture to insurance. Many scientists say they expect a revival of warming in coming years.

Theories for the pause include that deep oceans have taken up more heat with the result that the surface is cooler than expected, that industrial pollution in Asia or clouds are blocking the sun, or that greenhouse gases trap less heat than previously believed.

The change may be a result of an observed decline in heat-trapping water vapor in the high atmosphere, for unknown reasons. It could be a combination of factors or some as yet unknown natural variations, scientists say.

Read the rest at: Reuters

by P. Gosselin, and NTZ reader Jimbo

“The Earth has a fever,” we were told. “The science is settled and the debate is over. Scientists are unanimous - 97% of them agree: climate change is real, and is happening now, and we’ve got to act quickly.”

Over more than two decades we were told again and again that everywhere was warming faster than everywhere else – especially winters were warming up quickly. Snow was becoming a thing of the past and children soon weren’t going to know what it is.  “The warm winters that we are seeing are just a harbinger of what’s to come,” the media declared just a couple of years ago. The scientists were cock-sure.

Today we are finding that precisely the exact opposite is happening. Winters in Europe have turned colder and more severe. Central Europe has seen its 5th consecutive colder than normal winter in a row – a record since measurements began in the 19th century.

Read the list of failed predictions at: NoTricksZone

Posted at Powerlineblog.com by John Hinderaker

Last month, a group of scientists headed by geologist Shaun Marcott launched the latest salvo in the global warming war. They announced that they had reconstructed the last 11,000 years of Earth climate history, based on various proxies, and had found that in the 20th century there was an unprecedented uptick in temperature. The Marcott paper was hailed by liberal media outlets; to cite just a few examples:

* “We’re screwed: 11,000 years’ worth of ­climate data prove it.” The Atlantic, March 10.
* “The modern rise that has recreated the temperatures of 5,000 years ago is occurring at an exceedingly rapid clip on a geological time scale, appearing in graphs in the new paper as a sharp vertical spike.” Justin Gillis, New York Times, March 7.
* “’Rapid’ head spike unlike anything in 11,000 years. Research released Thursday in the journal Science uses fossils of tiny marine organisms to reconstruct global temperatures…. It shows how the glode for several thousands of years was cooling until an unprecedented reversal in the 20th century.” The Associated Press, March 7.

But when real scientists–that is, those who apply a skeptical, scientific approach rather than a religious attitude of fervor–studied the Marcott paper, it quickly fell apart.

Read the rest at Powerlineblog.com

By Harry Binswanger writing for Forbes.com

Like most of you, I yearn for shorter winters, more shirt-sleeve weather, less lashing from frigid winds. As a confirmed New Yorker, I’m not willing to do what millions have done: move to the sunbelt. I want warmer weather here in the Big City.

But I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming. I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather. It’s enough to make one doubt the “settled science” of the government-funded doom-sayers.

Read the rest at Forbes.com

By James Taylor

The mainstream media are reporting in breathless fashion about a new paper claiming current temperatures are their warmest in 4,000 years. Already, however, objective scientists are reporting serious flaws in the paper. The media may wish to paint a picture of runaway global warming, but the science tells a completely different story.

Recently graduated Ph.D. student Shaun Marcott has published a paper claiming he compiled a proxy temperature reconstruction indicating current temperatures are their warmest in at least 4,000 years. Proxy temperature reconstructions require careful scrutiny because the proxies are not direct temperature measurements, but represent other data and factors that may or may not have a close correlation with past temperatures. Some proxies are better than others. Also, an agenda-driven researcher can easily cherry-pick certain anomalous proxies that support a predetermined conclusion while ignoring a much larger set of proxies that tell a different story.

Perhaps the most notorious of agenda-driven proxy reconstructions was published by global warming alarmist Michael Mann. As a young, relatively unknown recent Ph.D. graduate, Mann attained wealth, fame and adulation among global warming alarmists after assembling a proxy temperature reconstruction that he claimed showed global temperatures underwent a steady, roughly 1,000-year decline followed by a sharp rise during the 20th century. The media reported on the Mann hockey stick reconstruction as if it settled the global warming debate, but objective scientists pointed out several crucial flaws that invalidated Mann’s claims. Eventually, Congress commissioned distinguished statistician Edward Wegman to review and report on Mann’s methods and conclusions. After assembling a blue ribbon panel of experts to study Mann’s temperature reconstruction, Wegman reported the criticisms of Mann’s reconstruction were “valid and compelling.”

Read the rest at Forbes

Producing and charging electric cars means heavy carbon-dioxide emissions.

By: Bjorn Lomborg

Electric cars are promoted as the chic harbinger of an environmentally benign future. Ads assure us of “zero emissions,” and President Obama has promised a million on the road by 2015. With sales for 2012 coming in at about 50,000, that million-car figure is a pipe dream. Consumers remain wary of the cars’ limited range, higher price and the logistics of battery-charging. But for those who do own an electric car, at least there is the consolation that it’s truly green, right? Not really.

For proponents such as the actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, the main argument is that their electric cars—whether it’s a $100,000 Fisker Karma (Mr. DiCaprio’s ride) or a $28,000 Nissan Leaf—don’t contribute to global warming. And, sure, electric cars don’t emit carbon-dioxide on the road. But the energy used for their manufacture and continual battery charges certainly does—far more than most people realize.

Read the rest at: The Wall St. Journal