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.

Bob Carter, Willie Soon & William Briggs: Changing sun, changing climate

If you talk to the global warming crowd, carbon dioxide -- CO2 -- is the enemy of mankind. Any and all creation of CO2 is bad for the planet, we're told, and its production must be strictly limited in order to save the world. But what if that wasn't true? What if CO2 were actually a planet-saving nutrient that could multiply food production rates and feed the world more nutritious, healthy plants? As it turns out, CO2 is desperately needed by food crops, and right now there is a severe shortage of CO2 on the planet compared to what would be optimum for plants. Greenhouse operators are actually buying carbon dioxide and injecting it into their greenhouses in order to maximize plant growth. The science on this is irrefutable. As just one example, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food says:

CO2 increases productivity through improved plant growth and vigour. Some ways in which productivity is increased by CO2 include earlier flowering, higher fruit yields, reduced bud abortion in roses, improved stem strength and flower size. Growers should regard CO2 as a nutrient.

Bob Carter, Willie Soon & William Briggs: Changing sun, changing climate

With the release of the password to unlock the full 220,000 email treasure trove, the Climategate saga has entered a new phase. Joining us to discuss this latest development is Dr. Tim Ball of drtimball.com.

Climategate: Dr. Tim Ball on the hacked CRU emails
It’s Time For The Person Who Leaked the CRU Emails To Step Forward
Climategate 3.0
Climategate 3.0 has occurred – the password has been released
Climategate: FOIA – The Man Who Saved The World

Global warming activists and media outlets are hyping a new study published in Science that claims the Earth is experiencing unprecedented temperatures. See: New York Times: Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years & Associated Press: HEAT SPIKE UNLIKE ANYTHING IN 11,000 YEARS. But the new media touted study is "based on 'reconstructed data' from 73 data sites, pretended to cover space-time of 196 million sq. mi. and 11,300 years". Another way to view the same claims are as follows: Earth Cooler Today Than 28% of the Past 11,300 Years: 'This is a paper that was bound to cause lurid headlines along lines that Earth is warming faster than at any time during past 11,000 years'. The new study is also counter to a preponderance of existing peer-reviewed studies showing the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warming were both as warm or warmer than today without benefit of modern emissions or SUVs.

Forced to delete David Attenborough's 'alarmist' warming claims from final show of Africa series. - Speaking over footage of Mount Kilimanjaro, Sir David made the assertion that 'some parts of the continent have become 3.5C hotter in the past 20 years'. However, figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that since 1850 global temperatures have risen by 0.76C, causing widespread concern among viewers. The comment, first broadcast in the final episode of the Africa series last Wednesday, was removed from Sunday night’s repeat of the show. A BBC spokesman said: 'There is widespread acknowledgement within the scientific community that the climate of Africa has been changing as stated in the programme. 'We accept the evidence for 3.5 degrees increase is disputable and the commentary should have reflected that. 'Therefore that line has been removed from Sunday's repeat and the iPlayer version replaced.' Many took to Twitter to dispute the fact, asking where the data came from. The BBC initially defended the claim, saying it was taken from a report by Oxfam and the New Economics Foundation, but in turn this report suggested the figure had come from a report by Christian Aid. This report however, says the data came from a 'conversation with authors; February 2006,' and the report's authors have not responded to question over its validity. Experts have also questioned the figure, with Dr Tim Osborn of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit telling the Guardian: So I would say that our data do not support the claim of 3.5 degC warming in the last 20 years in some regions of Africa.'

Widespread flooding that killed at least 23 people, battered a million others and paralyzed the Philippine capital briefly eased on Wednesday, allowing rescuers on rubber boats to reach a large number of distressed residents still marooned in submerged villages.

Manila was drenched with more than half of a month’s worth of rain in just 24 hours starting Monday. A typhoon in eastern China that has helped intensify the southwest monsoon in the Philippines blew further into the Chinese mainland, prompting Filipino forecasters to predict better weather the rest of the week. Government forecasters said the monsoon rains that overflowed major dams and rivers crisscrossing Manila and surrounding provinces would gradually abate and lead to sunny weather later this week after 12 days of relentless downpours. The deluge that began late Sunday was the worst since 2009, when hundreds died in rampaging flash floods.

“We’re still on a rescue mode,” said Benito Ramos, who heads the government’s main disaster—response agency. “Floods are receding in many areas but people are still trapped on their roofs.”

Ramos said the massive flooding turned half of Manila into “a water world” on Monday evening and into Tuesday. At least 23 died, including nine in a landslide in a hillside slum in suburban Quezon City and several others who drowned in outlying provinces. More than 1.2 million people were affected by the deluge, including 783,000 who fled from their inundated homes. With the receding floodwaters, some of the displaced have started returning to their homes but others stayed put despite the hard conditions in emergency shelters as rain clouds again darkened the sky Wednesday afternoon.

Chicago Tribune: Philippines rushes aid as more rains pound Manila

A debunking of the global warming agenda, from Roy W. Spencer, former NASA climatologist and climate expert. For more on this topic, purchase his new Broadside, "The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama's Global Warming Agenda" by clicking here: http://amzn.to/jYWzEH.

Photo: British environmental guru James Lovelock, seen on March 17, 2009 in Paris, admits he was "alarmist" about climate change in the past. (Jacques Demarthon/ AFP/Getty Images)

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.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared. He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far." The new book, due to be published next year, will be the third in a trilogy, following his earlier works, “Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity,” and “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can.” The new book will discuss how humanity can change the way it acts in order to help regulate the Earth’s natural systems, performing a role similar to the harmonious one played by plants when they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

"Restoring a Ruined Earth. The Heroic Mission of Thomas Berry," by Vincent Di Stefano

Despite the fact that we have clearly entered uncharted territory in relation to the effects of industrial civilisation on the fate of the earth and her creatures, big government of all persuasions seems intent on relentlessly pursuing economic growth, environmental plunder and social and political control at every level.

In view of our gathering predicament reflected in such intangibles as steadily rising carbon dioxide levels, deepening ocean acidification and accelerating methane exhalations from formerly locked under-sea and tundra deposits - to say nothing of the numerous social, political and environmental pathologies that continue to assail humanity - it may be instructive to revisit the thoughtful offerings of Thomas Berry, a wise elder who sought to awaken us all to the changes that have already occurred and those that will inevitably follow.

"Healing a Savaged Earth" is a tribute to the prophetic insight, vision and integrity of cultural historian Thomas Berry. Though others viewed him as a depth theologian and cultural guardian, he chose in his later years to call himself a "geologian" as an acknowledgement of his earth-centred philosophy which drew strongly from the insights of Taoism, Confucianism and the mysticism of Teilhard de Chardin and Henri Bergson.

The term “holocaust denial” is defined as follows by the American Anti-Defamation League:

Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy. It was this doctrine that was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust. What is on the surface a denial of the reality of genocide is, at its core, an appeal to genocidal hatred. (ADL 1996).

In other words, if you are unconvinced of the official view of the Nazi holocaust, you are complicit in it. Note that the party line changes. Thirty years ago, someone who refused to believe that Jews were made into soap, glue and lampshades by the Nazis, was allegedly party to murder. That is no longer the case. But today, if you question cattle trucks, gas chambers, or a number of Jewish fatalities less than about five million, you are still, by the above definition, someone who is trying to replay that genocide. Note that I don’t reject the latest version of the official story; I reject the idea that rejecting it is a crime. But that doesn’t satisfy the thought police; it just makes me an “apologist” rather than a “denier”. The acceptance of the concept “holocaust denier” is the result of a successful assault on the highest principles of Western civilization – sceptical enquiry and presumption of innocence. It was unlikely it would stop there. Legislators, activists and journalists have tried to extend the term “denier” to protect another sacred tablet: the belief that there is irrefutable evidence that human activity is causing the earth’s climate to enter a period of unprecedented, irreversible warming.

A newly discovered form of chemical intermediary in the atmosphere has the ability to remove pollutants in a way that leads to cloud-formation and could potentially help offset global warming.

The existence of these so-called Criegee biradicals, which are formed when ozone reacts with a certain class of organic compounds, was theorized over fifty years ago, but they have now been created and studied in the laboratory for the first time.

According to Science Daily, the discovery was made possible through the use of a third-generation synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which produces an intense, tunable light that enables scientists to differentiate between molecules which contain the same atoms but arranged in different combinations. The Criegee biradicals — named after Rudolph Criegee, who postulated their existence in the 1950′s — turn out to react with pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, much more rapidly than expected to form sulphates and nitrates. “These compounds,” Science Daily explains, “will lead to aerosol formation and ultimately to cloud formation with the potential to cool the planet.”

US airlines have suffered a defeat in the EU's highest court, which upheld a law on Wednesday that will require airlines to pay for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe. The new rule goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2012. US officials have warned that the move will have repercussions. - Unlike the European Union, the United States has so far refused to sign up to a binding agreement to cut carbon emissions. But now US airlines flying to Europe will be forced to pay for their emissions in future. The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that including foreign airlines in the EU emissions trading scheme is permissible. The decision was expected after a senior adviser to the court issued a preliminary opinion in October that found the EU legislation did not infringe upon the sovereignty of other states and was compatible with international accords. The emissions trading scheme forces businesses to buy rights to emit CO2. From Jan. 1, 2012, all airlines will have to purchase certificates for the emissions they release through takeoffs and landings at European airports. Initially, 85 percent of emission rights will be allocated free of charge, and the airlines will have to pay for the remaining 15 percent.

A very informative documentary about the real cause of global warming. It clearly discuss about the fact that CO2 is not cause of global warming. Take a look also at the Great Global Warming Swindle and Green House Conspiracy in google video. This documentary discusses many topics that are not covered in the Swindle such as the hockey stick graph, from the viewpoint of Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas.

After crunching ice-age climate numbers, Oregon researchers and colleagues from Harvard, Princeton, Cornell and Barcelona came up with two encouraging conclusions about future global warming.

The planet appears less sensitive to carbon dioxide changes than expected, their study says, so extreme temperature increases in the near future appear highly unlikely. And future warming may also be less than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, particularly at the upper end of the "likely" range.

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation's paleoclimate program, drew on the known extent of ice sheets in the past and levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide taken from air trapped in Antarctic ice cores. Researchers also mapped ice-age temperatures based on pollen levels on land and concentrations of temperature-sensitive microorganisms in the ocean. Schmittner and colleagues then ran a climate computer model at different "climate sensitivities" -- the climate's reaction to greenhouse gas levels -- to see which sensitivities best pinpointed actual ice-age temperatures.

Their conclusion: The climate appears less sensitive to greenhouse gases than prior estimates. Based on the computer runs, doubling carbon concentrations would likely increase the world's average temperature from 3.1 to 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit over preindustrial levels, the study predicts. That's lower than the IPCC's likely temperature range for a doubling of carbon dioxide: 3.6 to 8.1 degrees. And it's a far cry from increases of up to 18 degrees held out as low probability possibilities. The study also concludes that increases greater than 11 degrees from a doubling of C02 "should be assigned near-zero probability." Computer runs using such severe climate sensitivity modeled the globe as entirely covered in ice during the ice age, the study said. Schmittner said the actual number was closer to 10 percent.

Water is essential to life but in such places as India, Pakistan, China, and Thailand deluges have once again caused misery. Typhoon Nesat hit the Philippines earlier this week on its way to south China. In Pakistan, more than 5 million people have been affected by recent flooding, according to the aid agency Oxfam. Pakistan is still struggling to recover from the devastating monsoon rains in 2010. -- Lloyd Young (36 photos total)

A recent piece in Scientific American highlights a new geo-engineering endeavor being undertaken by UK scientists, who plan to pump toxic sulfate particles into the sky to supposedly thwart natural sunlight back into space, and ultimately prevent the earth from "warming." - The report explains that the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Change Engineering (SPICE) program (yes, this is a real program that confirms the existence of "chemtrails") has been given $30,000 to build a giant pipe that spews water and sulfates a mile up into the stratosphere. Supported at the end by a giant "stadium-size hydrogen balloon," the pipe will allegedly mimic the effects of a volcanic eruption, which the team building it insists will help to "cool" the earth.

TOKYO - Thousands of people in central Japan have been advised to evacuate as a powerful typhoon approaches. The storm system has already triggered floods that have left two people missing.

Public broadcaster NHK says some 1.3 million people have been ordered or advised to evacuate, including 80,000 people in Nagoya. The Meteorological Agency says the typhoon was located near the southern island of Tanegashima on Tuesday afternoon and it could reach the Tokyo area by Wednesday afternoon. Gifu prefectural police say a 9-year-old boy and an 84-year-old man are missing after apparently falling into swollen rivers due to heavy rains from the approaching storm. A typhoon that slammed Japan earlier this month left some 90 people dead or missing.

CNN: 1 million urged to flee as typhoon bears down on Japan - Tokyo (CNN) -- About 80,000 residents have been ordered to flee and more than 1 million people were urged to evacuate Nagoya, a city in central Japan, Tuesday as a typhoon was expected to hit the area. Despite the evacuation warnings, a little more than 60 people had evacuated the city by Tuesday afternoon, the city government said. More were expected to leave in the evening as the storm came closer. Typhoon Roke was packing winds of 185 kph (115 mph) and was predicted to make landfall with heavy rain some time Wednesday, said CNN meteorologist Jennifer Delgado. The storm was expected to hit south of Osaka and could drench some areas with about 250 mm (10 inches) of rain, Delgado said. Two areas in the Nagoya were ordered to evacuate because of the threat of flooding from the Shonai River, officials said.

Gore Flings Barnyard Epithet at 'Organized' Climate Change Critics. - Climate skeptics have "polluted" public debate on global warming using the same tactics tobacco companies once employed to deny the health risks of smoking, former Vice President Al Gore said last week.

"Some of the exact same people -- by name, I can go down a list of their names -- are involved in this," Gore said Thursday at an Aspen Institute forum in Aspen, Colo. "And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: 'This climate thing, it's nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn't trap heat. It's not -- It may be volcanoes.' Bullshit! 'It may be sun spots.' Bullshit! 'It's not getting warmer.' Bullshit!"

The Week: Al Gore's 'expletive-laden' climate change rant

Raw Story: Al Gore compares climate change skeptics to racists - Al Gore continued his criticism of climate change skeptics in an interview with Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky on UStream, going as far as to compare them to the racists of the 20th century.

ISLAMABAD, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Flash floods triggered by monsoon rains wiped out a village in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 33 people, a government official said on Friday. - Rescue officials were looking for survivors after at least 63 people went missing when heavy rains on Wednesday night caused a river to burst its banks in the remote Kohistan district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

"We have recovered 33 bodies and the search is on for the remaining missing persons," the area's top administrator Imtiaz Hussain Shah told Reuters. "It is just one area in the whole district that has been hit by sudden strong torrents after heavy downpour lashed the area and swept away some 25 to 30 houses scattered over the village."

Last year, monsoon rains caused the worst floods in Pakistan's history, with the country's northwestern areas among the worst hit. The Nation: Kohistan floods: 63 people missing, 33 dead bodies recovered

New York has declared a state of emergency as hundreds of thousands of Americans were on Thursday night told to evacuate their homes in anticipation of Hurricane Irene. - States of emergency were also declare in North Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey. In New Jersey’s Cape May County, as many as 750,000 people were last night told to evacuate. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the evacuation of hospitals and other vulnerable institutions in the most low-lying areas of New York City, as New York state declared a state of emergency. Projections suggested that Irene would become the first hurricane to directly strike the US mainland since 2008, when Ike killed more than 50 people and caused about $30 billion (£18 billion) in damage.