The tough economy has undermined the environmental enthusiasm of Californians, hitting the U.S. state that pioneered climate change legislation just as the federal government is taking on the issue, a survey showed on Wednesday.

The poll by the Public Policy Institute of California shows support for urgent action on climate change has split on political lines, with a third of respondents from the more conservative Republican Party now saying global warming will never happen.

Total support for the state's climate change law, a model for federal bills being debated, dropped to 66 percent from 73 percent last year. Meanwhile, the state has been reduced to issuing IOUs as unemployment has spiked to a new high.

An outpouring of skeptical scientists who are members of the American Chemical Society (ACS) are revolting against the group's editor-in-chief -- with some demanding he be removed -- after an editorial appeared claiming "the science of anthropogenic climate change is becoming increasingly well established."

The editorial claimed the "consensus" view was growing "increasingly difficult to challenge, despite the efforts of diehard climate-change deniers." The editor now admits he is "startled" by the negative reaction from the group's scientific members. The American Chemical Society bills itself as the "world's largest scientific society."

The June 22, 2009 editorial in Chemical and Engineering News by editor in chief Rudy Baum, is facing widespread blowback and condemnation from American Chemical Society member scientists. Baum concluded his editorial by stating that "deniers" are attempting to "derail meaningful efforts to respond to global climate change."

Dozens of letters from ACS members were published on July 27, 2009 castigating Baum, with some scientists calling for his replacement as editor-in-chief.

The editorial was met with a swift, passionate and scientific rebuke from Baum's colleagues. Virtually all of the letters published on July 27 in castigated Baum's climate science views. Scientists rebuked Baum's use of the word "deniers" because of the terms "association with Holocaust deniers." In addition, the scientists called Baum's editorial: "disgusting"; "a disgrace"; "filled with misinformation"; "unworthy of a scientific periodical" and "pap."

Experts predicted temperatures would top 86F (30C) while rainfall was likely to be "near or below average".

But the latest Met Office figures released yesterday show that July has been a washout - with almost a month's rain in the first two weeks alone.

The only glimmer of comfort was the fact that temperatures across the country have still been higher than an average summer.

The average UK rainfall for the first fortnight was 56.6mm (2.2in) - about 81 per cent of the normal July level.

Wales was the worst-hit area of Britain, with a total rainfall of 83.6 mm (3.3in), meaning it has already been wet enough for the whole month. North-west and north-east England both also had nearly a full month's rainfall in the first two weeks.

Central and south-east England had 37.8mm (1.5in), wetter than average, while western Scotland had two-thirds of its July downpour in the first fortnight. Eastern Scotland had nearly 90 per cent of its rain.

NASA's David Hathaway has adjusted his expectations of Solar Cycle 24 downwards. He is quoted in the New York Times here. Specifically, he said:

"Still, something like the Dalton Minimum - two solar cycles in the early 1800s that peaked at about an average of 50 sunspots - lies in the realm of the possible."

NASA has caught up with my prediction in early 2006 of a Dalton Minimum repeat, so for a brief, shining moment of three years, I have had a better track record in predicting solar activity than NASA.

Lawns are green. Electric bills are dropping. And the temperature gauge hasn't seen 90 all month.

If you're looking for the Ohio River valley's typical sultry summer weather, you're going to have wait.

With winds from the upper Midwest blowing cool Great Lakes air across the bluegrass, July's average temperatures are on track to be among the coolest ever recorded in Louisville, meteorologists said.

With cooler, rainy weather forecasted into the weekend, Louisville is on track to see its first July on record without a day in the 90s. And August may be balmier as well.

That suits bicyclist Anthony Baynard just fine.

"You don't have to worry about that 95 degree heat and humidity. I love it," said Baynard, 62, who rides several miles a day for exercise and to run short errands.

So far July's average high is the coolest on record - 80.7 degrees this month, compared with 1947's record of 82.7 degrees.

What is this, Christmas in July?

Not quite, but this unseasonably chilly midsummer month is about to break cold-weather records throughout the Midwest -- some more than 100 years old.

Meteorologists from Madison, Wis., to Chicago to Toledo, Akron and Columbus -- and dozens of cities in between -- are watching their thermometers as the month winds down.

By the end of the day Friday, they'll likely boast the coldest July on record.

In Toledo, that would fell a mark set back in 1894. In Akron, a record from 1904.

In Milwaukee, the record about to fall is older yet -- a daily average of 66.7 set in 1891.

That's what the Guardian is saying. And, it claims, that will "silence" global warming skeptics.

You mean man's link to warming has finally been proven and we will now reap what we've sown?

Well, not exactly. Here's the reason they give:

[The] [n]ew estimate [is] based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles.

They then trot this out:

The hottest year on record was 1998, and the relatively cool years since have led to some global warming sceptics claiming that temperatures have levelled off or started to decline. But new research firmly rejects that argument.

The research, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The work is the first to assess the combined impact on global temperature of four factors: human influences such as CO2 and aerosol emissions; heating from the sun; volcanic activity and the El Niño southern oscillation, the phenomenon by which the Pacific Ocean flips between warmer and cooler states every few years.

The analysis shows the relative stability in global temperatures in the last seven years is explained primarily by the decline in incoming sunlight associated with the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle, together with a lack of strong El Niño events. These trends have masked the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The cooler than normal July temperatures which have slashed air conditioner bills across much of the Midwest and East Coast appear all but certain to establish a new temperature benchmark by the time the month ends at midnight Friday. With the reading of 86 degrees set back on the 6th likely to stand as the month's warmest since July 1, the month is likely to become the first July in 139 years of official records here which fails to produce a temperature of 87 degrees or warmer. Monday's 84-degree high -- far from an exceptionally warm reading -- was the city's warmest in 12 days.

Several clusters of thunderstorms are likely to sweep the Chicago area Tuesday. Half inch diameter hail accompanied storms in Ogle County Monday evening just northwest of Polo.

Ian Plimer has outraged the ayatollahs of purist environmentalism, the Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming, and he seems to relish the damnation they heap on him.

Plimer is a geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, and he may well be Australia's best-known and most notorious academic.

Plimer, you see, is an unremitting critic of "anthropogenic global warming" -- man-made climate change to you and me -- and the current environmental orthodoxy that if we change our polluting ways, global warming can be reversed.

It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon with many precedents in history. Many have made the argument, too, that it is rubbish to contend human behaviour is causing the current climate change. And it has often been well argued that it is totally ridiculous to suppose that changes in human behaviour -- cleaning up our act through expensive slight-of-hand taxation tricks -- can reverse the trend.

But most of these scientific and academic voices have fallen silent in the face of environmental Jacobinism. Purging humankind of its supposed sins of environmental degradation has become a religion with a fanatical and often intolerant priesthood, especially among the First World urban elites.

Climate patterns are not something that we routinely talk about during the weather portion of the news simply because there isn't enough time to go into the details that govern our climate. Scott's World of Weather is an excellent forum to do just that. In this installment, we will go over the drivers of climate that have ultimately affected our weather this summer in northern Ohio.

Talk of global warming aside, there are well-documented natural cycles in the atmosphere and oceans that have a direct impact on our weather from season to season; month to month. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and many others are terms that you probably have never heard of. In fact, most of these cycles have only been coined within the last 15 years and don't get much media attention. Many of these cycles are poorly understood while others have been well-known for centuries. The grand-daddy of them all is the ever-popular El Nino. Back in 1997, El Nino was blamed for everything from horrible weather to the Indians losing the World Series. It became the catch-phrase for everything.

So far, this summer, temperatures have been noticibly cooler than in summers past. Rainfall is down at bit too. Is El Nino the big reason for this? Is its cousin "La Nina?" Is it something entirely different?