Real Climate Science

Lakeland Ledger – Google News Archive Search

Obama sent thousands of Americans to die in Afghanistan, in what he called “the right war” – which he never believed could be won.

In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”

Robert Gates, former defense secretary, offers harsh critique of Obama’s leadership in ‘Duty’ – The Washington Post

In Much of U.S., Extreme Cold is Becoming More Rare | Climate Central

As usual, they started their graph in the 1970’s, which had the coldest winters of the 20th century in the US. Had they started during almost any other decade, they would have seen an increase in very cold weather over time.

1974 was the year Nixon resigned. Will history repeat itself 40 years later?

Chicago Weather Officially Too Cold For Polar Bears

h/t to Dave G

It turns out that scientists actually don’t have any idea what causes climate change.

Lakeland Ledger – Google News Archive Search

Lakeland Ledger – Google News Archive Search

In 1999, scientists were using the polar vortex as a way to raise money for Arctic ozone hole research.

Eugene Register-Guard – Google News Archive Search

1994 was a cold year, due largely to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. That year also had  a lot of Arctic ice. There was a similar polar vortex cold outbreak during that year, and no one was stupid enough to blame it on global warming.

The Deseret News – Google News Archive Search

Technology to Cool the Planet: An Interview with David Keith

Boston Review: First, can you explain to readers why sulfates are good candidates for geoengineering, as opposed to other molecules?

David Keith: Sulfates are the devil we know. Small water droplets would be roughly as effective as sulfuric acid in reflecting sunlight—clouds, composed of water droplets, are white and reflective—but they would evaporate almost instantly in the dry air of the stratosphere. The sulfuric acid keeps the water from evaporating.

Sulfur emissions from fossil fuel combustion are already cooling the planet and killing roughly a million people a year from air pollution worldwide. The amount of sulfur that would need to be put in the stratosphere for solar geoengineering would be a few percent of current fossil fuel emissions. Any such injection would carry real environmental risks such as ozone destruction and acid rain, but sulfates have the advantage of being a common atmospheric chemical, one that is injected into the stratosphere by volcanic eruptions. So although sulfates are risky, we have some empirical evidence about what the risks are.

Technology to Cool the Planet: An Interview with David Keith | Boston Review