Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change

by Ian Johnston, msnbc.com

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

British environmental guru James Lovelock, seen on March 17, 2009 in Paris, admits he was “alarmist” about climate change in the past. (more…)

Source: SPPI Blog

by Dennis ambler

On April 12^th, the National Park Foundation announced their 2012 Parks Climate Challenge Program Grantees.

So what is the Parks Climate Challenge Program?

This is from the press release:

“Since 2009, the Parks Climate Challenge program has encouraged the use of national parks as classrooms to educate students about climate change through funding and facilitation.  The ability to learn about this important issue through hands-on, science-based field curriculum, has proven a positive model through which to reach students.      

“Climate change is a profound problem and the youth of America need to be at the forefront of the solution,” said Neil Mulholland, President and CEO of the National Park Foundation. “The Parks Climate Challenge is just one of our programs that empowers our youth and strengthens our parks.”

Now in its third year, the program first connects with teachers, giving them the tools to create engaging curriculum to teach to their student on the subject of climate change.” (more…)

EPA’s E-15 ethanol plan is bad for our pocketbooks, environment and energy policy

by Paul Driessen

The Obama Administration’s anti-hydrocarbon ideology and “renewable” energy mythology continues to subsidize crony capitalists and the politicians they help keep in office – on the backs of American taxpayers, ratepayers and motorists. The latest chapter in the sorry ethanol saga is a perfect example.

Bowing to pressure from ADM, Cargill, Growth Energy and other Big Ethanol lobbyists, Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow ethanol manufacturers to register as suppliers of E15 gasoline. E15 contains 15% ethanol, rather than currently mandated 10% blends.

The next lobbying effort will focus on getting E15 registered as a fuel in individual states and persuading oil companies to offer it at service stations. But according to the Associated Press and Washington Post, Team Obama already plans to provide taxpayer-financed grants, loans and loan guarantees to “help station owners install 10,000 blender pumps over the next five years” and promote the use of biofuels.  (more…)

Source: https://www.politicopro.com/go/?id=10991

By Dan Berman

President Barack Obama says the amount of money poured into fighting the scientific consensus on climate change will push the issue into the presidential campaign.

In an interview with Rolling Stone published Wednesday, Obama also says he’s worried about the lack of international progress to address global warming and believes that is tied to frustration with the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people’s number-one priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices,” Obama said. “In that environment, it’s been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science. (more…)

Citizens For Limited Government: The environmental agenda has been infected by extremism—it’s become an economic suicide pact. And we’re here to challenge it. On Earth Day, visit http://freemarketamerica.org/.

Source:  Master Resource

Source:  http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/25-signs-that-middle-class-families-have-been-targeted-for-extinction_04182012

OPINION

25 Signs That Middle Class Families Have Been Targeted For Extinction

by Michael Snyder

The middle class in America is being systematically wiped out, and most people don’t even realize what is happening.  Every single year, millions more Americans fall out of the middle class and become dependent on the government.  The United States once had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now the middle class is rapidly shrinking and government dependence is at an all-time high.  So why is this happening?  Well, America is becoming a poorer nation at the same time that wealth is becoming extremely concentrated at the very top.  At this point, our economic system is designed to funnel as much money and power to the federal government and to the big corporations as possible.  Individuals and small businesses have a really hard time thriving in this environment.  To most big corporations these days, workers are viewed as financial liabilities.  Most corporations want to reduce their payrolls as much as possible.  You see, the truth is that most corporations want to be just like Apple.  If you can believe it, Apple makes $400,000 in profit per employee.  Big corporations don’t care that you need to pay the mortgage and provide for your family.  Their goal is to make as much money as possible.  And most of the control freaks that run our bloated federal government don’t care much about middle class families either.  To many politicians and federal bureaucrats, middle class families are “useless eaters” that are constantly damaging the environment with their “excessive” lifestyles.  In this day and age, neither the federal government nor the big corporations really have much use for middle class Americans, and that is really, really bad news for the the future of the middle class family in America.

There are three key factors that are constantly chipping away at the middle class…. (more…)

Source:  Climate science

There is a news article with the header

Not just March, but start of 2012 shatter US records for heat, worrying meteorologists

by Seth Borenstein

Excerpts from the article read [with my comments inserted]

It’s not just March.

“It’s been ongoing for several months,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Meteorologists say an unusual confluence of several weather patterns, including La Nina, was the direct cause of the warm start to 2012. While individual events cannot be blamed on global warming, Crouch said this is like the extremes that are supposed to get more frequent because of man-made climate change. Greenhouse gases come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

My Comment:  The highlighted text is yet another example where unsubstantiated claims are made to infer that these extremes are a result of added CO2. Yet what Mr. Crouch ignored is that in March, the global average lower tropospheric temperature anomalies were only +0.11C above the 30 year average for March (see)! The lower tropospheric anomalies are ~0.4C cooler than in early 2010. (more…)

Source:  Global Warming Policy Foundation

by Dr. Richard Lindzen

Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT. Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Source:  Orange County Register

We’ve noticed a growing trend: global warming alarmism is becoming much less alarming. Maybe it’s the Cry Wolf syndrome. Maybe it’s just taking notice of reality. Maybe it’s only a fad that’s run its course. Nevertheless, there’s more evidence every day:

From the Oregonian newsapaper:

“For people who want more action on global warming, an inconvenient truth has arisen over the last decade: Annual average temperatures stayed relatively flat globally — and dropped in the United States and Oregon — despite mankind’s growing release of greenhouse gases.

“The hiatus in temperature increases may be contributing to higher public skepticism about warming, particularly in the United States. (more…)

Source:  NoTrickZone

How often do we hear screams “head for the hills, sea levels are rising fast!” from alarmists like James Extreme Hansen of GISS and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)?

Yet, study after study show that there is no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. All sea level fluctuations are within the normal range of variation. Nothing unusual is happening. (more…)

Source:  Science Daily

A new study using satellite mapping technology reveals there are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than previously thought. The results provide an important benchmark for monitoring the impact of environmental change on the population of this iconic bird, which breeds in remote areas that are very difficult to study because they often are inaccessible with temperatures as low as -58 degrees Fahrenheit.

Recently reporting in the journal PLoS ONE, an international team of scientists describe how they used Very High Resolution satellite images to estimate the number of penguins at each colony around the coastline of Antarctica. (more…)

Source:  Climate Change Reconsidered

Writing in the pages of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feeley and Silman (2009) say that “ongoing development of the Amazon, including natural gas and oil production, large-scale cattle ranching, soy farming, extended networks of improved roads, and the various synergistic activities that invariably accompany increased access, is causing the rapid loss and degradation of natural habitat,” which, as we all know, can lead to the extinctions of species that live there.

So just how serious is the situation? (more…)

Source:  Climate Change Reconsidered

Authors Humlum et al. (2011) write that “analytic climate models have provided the means to predict potential impacts on future climate by anthropogenic changes in atmospheric composition.” However, they indicate that “future climate development will not only be influenced by anthropogenic changes, but also by natural variations.” And they say that knowledge of these variations is incomplete. (more…)

Source: Climate Change Reconsidered

Bali et al. (2011) introduce their review of what is known about Himalayan glaciers by noting that a “glacial inventory carried out by the Geological Survey of India reveals the existence of over 9,000 valley glaciers in India and at least about 2,000 glaciers in Nepal and Bhutan,” citing Raina (2006). And they say that “following the alarmist approach of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” a number of subsequent reports related to the bleak future of Himalayan glaciers have been issued, mainly through the media. These reports, as they describe them, have suggested that “almost all Indian glaciers including the Gangotri glacier will vanish from the Earth in the next few decades.” More particularly, they say the reports suggest that “initially, there would be flooding followed by the drying of glacial fed rivers of the Indian subcontinent, desertification, rise of sea level, submergence of the coastal areas, spread of diseases, drop in the production of food grains, etc.,” all due, of course, to “anthropogenically induced global warming.”

So what’s the real story? (more…)