wikistan

More than 100,000 rare gorillas found in Congo.  Quite remarkable, heh Quimby?

Environment

According to some Spanish and German fascists scientists, changes in global wind patterns could have caused abrupt glacial climatic change.

Environment

In a nutshell, this is the common theme of the 2008 election–one side insists that only the government can foster innovation and generate energy independence while the other acknowledges that private innovation has an important role, and should be justly rewarded.

McCain’s $300 million prize for car battery innovation earns nothing but scorn from the Democratics.

“The battery prize is another gimmick,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-San Francisco, said. “It doesn’t wash. We already know what we have to do right now: support renewable resources and support clean-car tax credits,” which McCain has voted against, she said

Barack Obama has also ridiculed McCain’s plan as a gimmick.

Sen. Barack Obama today ridiculed a proposal by his presidential rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain, to offer a $300 million taxpayer-funded cash prize to boost advanced battery research.

“When John F. Kennedy decided that we were going to put a man on the moon, he didn’t put a bounty out for some rocket scientist to win — he put the full resources of the United States government behind the project and called on the ingenuity and innovation of the American people,” the Illinois senator said in a speech in Las Vegas. “That’s the kind of effort we need to achieve energy independence in this country, and nothing less will do.”

Surprising, when you consider that Obama’s own proposals include similar cash “gimmicks“. Is Obama jealous because McCain beat him to the headline?

In 2004, the $10 million Ansari X-Prize competition gimmick was won by a private American company and sent an ordinary American into space. Twice.

In defending his recent pivot on receiving federal campaign funds for the 2008 election, Obama described the nature of his fundraising as a “parallel public financing system“, ostensibly because the involvement of so many small donors lends “public” characteristics to his campaign finances. Conversely, Obama suggests that as President he would dismiss a similarly-conceived “parallel public energy independence system” developed by anyone less than an activist federal government. How telling.

All Topics, Economy, Environment, Politics

Stay classy, Lee.

Environment, Media, Politics lee judge, rush limbaugh, tim russert

Leading climate change scientist succumbs to a delirium common in the Upper West Side.

Environment

Reason Magazine – a quick bit on recent emission stats.  

Environment

Top NASA action man (indirectly) makes the case for nuclear energy, but comes dangerously close to sounding like a Big Oil Troofer.  Well, he pretty much is a Bil Oil Troofer.

Gotta drum up some “grant” money, eh Dottore?

Environment , climate, climate change, congress, emissions, energy, global warming, government, greenhouse gas, hansen, nasa, oil

Global warming isn’t just some bumpersticker slogan. It’s real, and you’d better pay attention lest you get imprisoned by elite technocrats.

All Topics, Environment climate change, global warming, hurricanes, katrina, science, weather

Warmer oceans might actually reduce the number of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall.

A warming global ocean — influencing the winds that shear off the tops of developing storms — could mean fewer Atlantic hurricanes striking the United States according to new findings by NOAA climate scientists.

We really just don’t know yet, do we?

All Topics, Environment climate change, global warming, hurricanes, katrina, science, weather

No matter how hard Americans try, they still might not be able to melt all the glacial ice in the Arctic. From Science Daily:

New research challenges the generally accepted belief that substantial ice sheets could not have existed on Earth during past super-warm climate events. The study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego provides strong evidence that a glacial ice cap, about half the size of the modern day glacial ice sheet, existed 91 million years ago during a period of intense global warming.

We have to keep trying, though. It is our children’s destiny.

All Topics, Environment arctic, cimate, climate change, Environment, forcing, glacier, global warming, ice, melt, warming

. . .there’s precedence?

Two researchers here spent months scouring through old expedition logs and reports, and reviewing 70-year-old maps and photos before making a surprising discovery: They found that the effects of the current warming and melting of Greenland’s glaciers that has alarmed the world’s climate scientists [also] occurred in the decades following an abrupt warming in the 1920s.

If we’ve seen this before, then what caused it last time?

Their evidence reinforces the belief that glaciers and other bodies of ice are exquisitely hyper-sensitive to climate change and bolsters the concern that rising temperatures will speed the demise of that island’s ice fields, hastening sea level rise.

If there’s anything needing reinforcing, wouldn’t it be our curiosity about the abrupt warming in the 1920′s?

All Topics, Environment

Warmer temperatures tied to wildfires, scientists say

Arson suspected in several California wildfires.

** Egregious Update ** Photographic proof that climate “scientists” are openly, er, fanning the flames of climate debate. And with methane, no less!

All Topics, Environment