Big snow flakes fell early Friday evening, turning Downtown Boise into a giant snow globe for people on their way home from work. The snow caught many people off guard, including this bicyclist heading down Idaho Street between 8th and 9th around 5:45 p.m. Across the Treasure Valley, tree branches heavy with wet, snow-covered leaves fell on power lines, causing scattered power outages. This is the earliest measurable snowfall in Boise since recordkeeping began in 1898, according to the National Weather Service. At 10 p.m., the Weather Service said 1.7 inches of snow had fallen. The previous earliest recorded snowfall was Oct. 12, 1969, when a little more than an inch fell. And if the snow wasn't enough, meteorologists say winds across southwestern Idaho will average 25 to 40 mph through Saturday afternoon, with gusts up to 55 mph. Sustained winds of 30 to 40 mph are expected, which can make driving difficult.
"I don't trust you, and I also question your integrity." Thus did Maurice Strong offer me a seat on his living room sofa.
Often described as an "international man of mystery," Mr. Strong during his long, globe-trotting career has been one of the most influential architects of the opaque cross-border bureaucracy that is today's United Nations. He is probably best known as godfather of the U.N.'s 1997 Kyoto treaty, and as a former U.N. top adviser who in that same year received a check for almost $1 million, bankrolled by the U.N.-sanctioned regime of Saddam Hussein. (Mr. Strong told me that at the time he did not know the money came from Baghdad.)
Joe Bastardi, the Chief Long-Range Forecaster at AccuWeather, has released his 2008-09 Winter Season Forecast addressing issues of average temperature and precipitation that will impact the nation. His forecast calls for one of the coldest winters in several years across much of the Eastern portion of the United States, the population-dense third of the nation
Gary Wood’s Phoenix-area shrimp farm was highly profitable in the 90’s, but after an increase of imports from Asia, Wood went looking for something else to fill his ponds. Now that biodiesel is cost-competitive with its petroleum cousin, algae-farms have been popping up around Arizona and other warm areas. But Wood has an advantage: his shrimp already eat algae, so he knows exactly how to grow it.
“We will harvest the algae in a very similar way we took the buildup from the shrimp ponds,” Wood said. “It is just amazing we are in this position right now. Up until a couple of years ago, we didn’t realize we’d done so much of this research.”
Biofuels could be a crucial weapon against both rising temperatures and dwindling global oil supplies. They are made from organic material such as plants, so they essentially recycle existing carbon in the atmosphere instead of releasing new carbon from the depths of the earth; they are also, in principle, endlessly renewable. But the best-known biofuel, ethanol, is looking decidedly unpromising right now. Today most ethanol in the United States is made from corn, using an energy-intensive process that may not actually save a lot of fossil fuel, and in any case America cannot produce enough ethanol from corn to really matter.
Al Gore has rightly been scolded for encouraging civil disobedience to stop global warming. But his little-noticed follow-up statement might be even more foolish — and dangerous.
When it comes to sheer crackpottery on environmental issues, no national figure can measure up to the lofty standard set by the former Tennessee senator and vice president. This is a man who is leading a caravan of humming hybrid drivers to nowhere and is willing to criminalize those who disagree with him to get there.
Results of a program using Aspen’s Canary Initiative to sell carbon offset credits to Democratic National Convention attendees are a little underwhelming.
The program, set up by the DNC Host Committee through the Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau and rolled out about a week before the convention started, raised a total of $18.34 worth of Canary Tags, offsetting 0.9 tons of carbon emissions.
Al Gore, left, and Clay McKinney stand on his houseboat, Bio-Solar One, which the Gores keep docked on Center Hill Lake.
His large Nashville home, utility bills and jet travels have drawn flamethrowers over the last year and a half. Now, it's a houseboat he bought this summer.
"Here's the good news for him," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "It doesn't matter a whit. He's out of politics. He's won the Nobel Prize, the Academy Award and goodness knows what else. ... He's got the last laugh on anybody."
ONE commonly repeated argument for doing something about climate change sounds compelling, but turns out to be almost fraudulent. It is based on comparing the cost of action with the cost of inaction, and almost every major politician in the world uses it. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, for example, used this argument when he presented the European Union's proposal to tackle climate change earlier this year.
Recalling that people such as Robert F. Kennedy have called climate skeptics “traitors”, David Suzuki calls for their jailing, the Grist website called for Nuremburg trials for them, NASA’s Dr. Jim Hansen calling for their trials for treason, along with the habitual insults from Al Gore, its been difficult for anyone to respectfully dissent. It’s been difficult to stick to the rules of hard science, by demanding evidence and replication, both of which require questioning but are often followed by insults and threats.
The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.
Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change.
The Earth is currently in the geologic epoch known as the Holocene. This began nearly 12,000 years ago when the last ice age (more precisely, the Weichsal glacial) ended. Temperatures warmed, glaciers began to retreat, and the Arctic began to melt. This began what is called an interglacial: a warmer period between glaciation.
We tend to think of the poles as immutable, but geologically speaking, permanent polar ice is a rare phenomenon, comprising less than 10% of history. Icecaps form briefly between interglacials, only to melt as the next one begins -- this time around will be no different.
So we know the Arctic will eventually be open water. The only question is how it will affect us.
The record-setting surface of the sun. A full month has gone by without a single spot Source: Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
In the past 1000 years, three previous such events -- the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called a "mini ice age". For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.
A weakened Hurricane Gustav closed in on flood-prone coastal Louisiana Monday, bringing punishing wind and sheets of rain. But the storm veered away from New Orleans, where only a few holdouts and those that refused to abandon Bourbon Street remained.
Gusts snapped large branches from the majestic oak trees that form a canopy over St. Charles Avenue. Tens of thousands were without power in New Orleans and other low-lying parishes, but officials in said backup generators were keeping city drainage pumps in service.
As the estimated cost of measures proposed by politicians to "combat global warming" soars ever higher – such as the International Energy Council's $45 trillion – "fighting climate change" has become the single most expensive item on the world's political agenda. As Senators Obama and McCain vie with the leaders of the European Union to promise 50, 60, even 80 per cent cuts in "carbon emissions", it is clear that to realise even half their imaginary targets would necessitate a dramatic change in how we all live, and a drastic reduction in living standards.
Police with bullhorns plan to go street to street this weekend with a tough message about getting out ahead of Hurricane Gustav: This time there will be no shelter of last resort. The doors to the Superdome will be locked. Those who stay will be on their own.
This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century.
Data from the UK Met Office shows that temperatures in the first half of the year have been more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than any year since 2000. The principal reason is La Nina, part of the natural cycle that also includes El Nino, which cools the globe.
Floridians were warned to beware of alligators in their flooded streets as Tropical Storm Fay poured more rain on the Sunshine State's central Atlantic coast, pushing creatures of all kinds from their homes.
Hundreds of houses have been inundated in the torrential rains, trapping residents and leaving much of Florida a soggy mess. Fay stayed offshore Thursday.
FORT LAUDERDALE,Florida,August 18/08'Emergency officials have been warning South Floridians to seek shelter during Tropical Storm Fay but a man in Fort Lauderdale seeking some thrills on the rough surf didn't heed that warning and ended up in the hospital after being hurt in an astonishing kite boarding accident that was caught on camera.
The NBC family of networks has no problem showing viewers how to save the planet. But if it is a muggy, smoggy 85 degrees, as is the forecast for Beijing this week, consider looking elsewhere for eco-inspiration.
WTHR, the NBC affiliate for Indianapolis, reported from Beijing and described the NBC set used for the network's two highest rated news broadcasts, “NBC Nightly News” and “Today,” as air conditioned – even though it is outdoors.
Boone Pickens may be a fine man, and has played a colorful and useful role on the American stage for decades. But his "energy plan," which he's spending a fortune to promote on cable TV, is not a plan. Asserting that something would be good to do is not "a plan." Saying how to do it is "a plan."
The Segway, that marvel of two-wheeled balance and electric mobility, may someday solve America's dependence on gas-powered engines. But first, it will have to solve the suburbs. That was the lesson of my short-lived experiment in gas-free living, an ill-fated attempt to explore the latest in electric tech as an alternative to $4-a-gallon gas.
Two British farmers from Nottinghamshire have been breaking new ground in the southern "chernozem" (black earth) region of Russia, by turning derelict land into prime wheat growing fields.
Their introduction of modern farming methods has boosted production to as much as three times that of local farmers.
DAILY, new evidence emerges to demonstrate that Climate Minister Penny Wong is wrong.
The latest blow to the Government’s apocalyptic prophet is news from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute that there is more ice than normal in the Arctic waters north of the Svalbard archipelago.
According to the Barents Observer there are open areas in this area in most years during July - but this year the area is covered by ice.
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