From C3 Headlines

As the monthly empirical evidence keeps pouring in, the AGW hypothesis and climate model simulations that portray atmospheric CO2 levels being the principal driving force behind global temperature change looks weaker and weaker. A growing chorus of scientists worldwide are now saying that the idea that global warming is caused by ‘CO2 vapours’ is a quaint, 1800′s European hypothesis, but severely lacking in any robust, modern empirical evidence.

While the CO2-vapours based AGW hypothesis crumbles in the face of actual climate data, other scientific explanations regarding global temperature change are looking stronger and stronger. One such hypothesis is that the Southern Oscillation (SO) accounts for some 80% of global temperature variance.

Read the rest at C3 Headlines.

The last we saw such an economy was in the 13th Century

By Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren

“Green” energy such as wind, solar and biomass presently constitute only 3.6% of fuel used to generate electricity in the U.S. But if another “I Have a Dream” speech were given at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, it would undoubtedly urge us on to a promised land where renewable energy completely replaced fossil fuels and nuclear power.How much will this particular dream cost? Energy expert Vaclav Smil calculates that achieving that goal in a decade–former Vice President Al Gore’s proposal–would incur building costs and write-downs on the order of $4 trillion. Taking a bit more time to reach this promised land would help reduce that price tag a bit, but simply building the requisite generators would cost $2.5 trillion alone.

Let’s assume, however, that we could afford that. Have we ever seen such a “green economy”? Yes we have; in the 13th century.

Renewable energy is quite literally the energy of yesterday. Few seem to realize that we abandoned “green” energy centuries ago for five very good reasons.

Read the rest at Forbes.

By Paul Chesser

Living in a home with four kids and two dogs, one child’s “clean” can mean “unacceptable” to an adult — think barely visible shower scum or machine-washed plates without phosphates.

And necessary energy levels and types mean different things to different people: A back-to-nature maiden who practices what she preaches needs much less than a multitasker who watches her LCD TV while researching on the Internet and listening to her iPod.

And as we know from years of observation of political discourse, one man’s “standard” is another’s moral abhorrence.

Put them together in a “Clean Energy Standard” (CES) and you ask for real trouble.

But that’s not stopping Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who on Monday — as Chairman and Ranking Republican respectively of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee — issued a “white paper” that solicits comments on what should constitute a CES. You might remember that in his State of the Union address last January 25, President Obama proposed that the federal government impose an 80 percent standard by the year 2035.

Read the rest at the American Spectator.

Is this what climate change looks like?

By Susan Kraemer

There has been an increase in the numbers of earthquakes over 6.0, over the last few years. For the first half decade till 2006, there were about 13 earthquakes a year over 6.0 according to statistics at the USGS (13, 13, 13, 12, 13).

But in the last few years, the frequency of major earthquakes (over 6.0) increased to 20, 17, 21, 25, and in just the first 3 months of this year we already have had 7 large earthquakes.

After the Haiti earthquake in 2010, followed by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in Chile in January, at 7.1, followed by two averaging 6.7 in February, and also in February a 6.3 in February in New Zealand (in a part of the country not prone to earthquakes), now we have the 9.0 mega quake with a 7.2 aftershock in Japan, in March.

At last year’s American Geophysical Union meeting geologists were already questioning whether there was a climate change link underlying the increasing frequency of unusually large earthquakes, according to  Mathew McDermott at Treehugger. The Haiti earthquake was then just the latest example.

Read the rest at Clean Technica.

By Tiffany Kaiser

NASA and international university researchers claim that humans have thrown off the balance between the Earth’s rotation, surface air temperatures and movements in its molten core through our contribution of greenhouse gases.

Those included in the study were Jean Dickey and Steven Marcus from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with Olivier de Viron, from the Universite Paris Diderot and Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France.

Read the rest at Daily Tech

Snowmobile on Roof

By James Taylor

Sitting in on a March 1 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) press conference regarding global warming and heavy snowfalls, I couldn’t help feeling like the chairman of the Senate committee questioning mafia capo Frank Pentangeli in Godfather II. The chairman, listening incredulously as Pentangeli contradicts a sworn written statement he had earlier given to the committee, waves the written statement in the air and protests, “We have a sworn affidavit – we have it – your sworn affidavit…. Do you deny that confession, and do you realize what will happen as a result of your denial?”The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report was as straightforward as Frank Pentangeli’s earlier confession that he had killed on behalf of Michael Corleone. “Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms,” IPCC reported.

That was in 2001. Now, however, with an unprecedented number of major winter snowstorms hitting the northeastern U.S. during the past two winters, the alarmists are clamming up and changing their tune faster than Tom Hagen can fly in Vincenzo Pentangeli from Italy to aid his brother in his time of trouble.

Read the rest at Forbes.