'Brown Dogs' complicate climate [hoax] plan - POLITICO.com

President Barack Obama’s next big legislative priority — a comprehensive energy and climate bill — sits in limbo in no small part because of wavering senators from his own party.

About a dozen Democrats — from the Great Plains, Midwest, Appalachia and the South — continue to resist the idea of putting a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
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“I’ve never been a huge fan of cap and trade or call it what you want,” Pryor told POLITICO on Thursday. “What I’ve told everybody is that I would at least wait and see what they get on paper before I make a decision, but I do have concerns about it.”
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“I don’t see it,” said Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. “You never say never here because somebody may change their mind. But I won’t be one of those people changing my mind.”
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“How many times over the past years have I said that these particularly newly elected Democrats aren’t really excited about going home and saying, ‘Aren’t you proud of me? I voted for the largest tax increase in history,’” said Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and a skeptic on the science linking man-made emissions to global warming.
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Still, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a longtime advocate of climate legislation, said Thursday that raw politics have convinced her that the votes won’t be there this year.

Obama Showers Green Stimulus. . . on Corporate Korea? - Planet Gore - National Review Online

Detroit – In the latest stop on his “Recovery Summer” tour, rock star President Barack Obama landed in Holland, Michigan, on Thursday, insulted its congressman, handed American stimulus dollars to a Korean corporation, and proclaimed Obamanomics a success even as Michigan has lost 94,000 jobs since his Recovery Act was enacted.

All in all, another day in the life of an increasingly unpopular president who seems to be living in an alternative universe.

Exceptional year for western Sierra Nevada wildflowers

A combination of a high snow pack and a late spring has resulted in wet meadows, dry slopes and stream sides exhibiting simultaneously exceptional floral displays this year.

On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth

[Alarmist Stefan Rahmstorf] The current exceptionally long minimum of solar activity has led to the suggestion that the Sun might experience a new grand minimum in the next decades, a prolonged period of low activity similar to the Maunder minimum in the late 17th century. The Maunder minimum is connected to the Little Ice Age, a time of markedly lower temperatures, in particular in the Northern hemisphere. Here we use a coupled climate model to explore the effect of a 21st-century grand minimum on future global temperatures, finding a moderate temperature offset of no more than −0.3°C in the year 2100 relative to a scenario with solar activity similar to recent decades. This temperature decrease is much smaller than the warming expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century.