Free Republic

I am ashamed to admit that I had never heard of Irena Sendler, whose obituary appeared in this morning’s paper. Hers is an awesomely humbling story, even by the standards of her heroic generation. A Polish Catholic, she spirited some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, displaying casual and extraordinary courage. She kept a list of the children she had saved, hoping one day to reunite them with their parents – although, in the event, almost all lost their families in Treblinka. In 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured. Her legs and feet were broken,...

Excerpt - Just got a nervous call from my lawyers who said they wanted to give me a "heads up" about a "situation" at Broadcom. See more about it here. Basically the feds are going after some Broadcom execs over some options backdating stuff. I'm like, So what? I don't work at Broadcom. They're like, Um, well, see, Broadcom did its own internal investigation and already cleared these guys, and the SEC isn't buying it apparently, and though the company itself has already settled the whole thing the SEC is still going after the executives as individuals. Now you do...

Al Gore says global warming is an inconvenient truth. “Inconvenient” adds a clever twist to the name of the would-be president’s popular documentary and book. But far worthier of scrutiny is the other word in the title: “Truth.” Man-made global warming, says the former politician and a rising sea of climate alarmists, is not just inconvenient, it’s an unequivocal, undeniable truth. In fact, the truth about global warming is so convincing that “debate in the scientific community is over.” Says who? Well, the United Nations for starters. On February 2 last year, the United Nations issued a press release highlighting...

Gore Financially Invested in Climate Cause By Fred Lucas CNSNews.com Staff Writer May 14, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - Weeks before announcing a $300-million, three-year advertising campaign to raise awareness about global warming, Al Gore was conducting a slide show for a group of investors in Monterey, Calif., touting companies such as Bloom Energy, Amryis , Mascoma and other firms that are not household names -- yet. These bio-fuel and green technology firms could be poised to take off, Gore told his audience. "Here are just a few of the investments I personally think make sense," he said during the March 1...

What about Al? There is a rumor among those close to the Obama camp that this weekend will bring a big endorsement for the Illinois Senator. We can scratch John Edwards off that list, he is yesterday's news. Probably the only thing 'bigger' than Edwards would be former Vice-President Al Gore -- who will be in Pittsburgh this Sunday (May 18) to give the commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon University. Gore, after his unsuccessful run for president in 2000, took an environmental path, rather than political, and has become a cult-like figure among the left and environmentally correct.

The Blairs’ hearts sank when they learnt that George Bush’s victory over Al Gore in 2000 had been ratified and that he was to become President of the United States, Cherie Blair reveals in The Times today. She tells how she and her husband watched Mr Bush on television and were concerned at his poor grasp of foreign affairs, but Mr Blair was determined to have a strong relationship with the Republican President. Although they had initial reservations about his political leanings she and her husband learnt to appreciate “a very funny, charming man with a quirky sense of humour”....

The Blairs’ hearts sank when they learnt that George Bush’s victory over Al Gore in 2000 had been ratified and that he was to become President of the United States, Cherie Blair reveals in The Times today. She tells how she and her husband watched Mr Bush on television and were concerned at his poor grasp of foreign affairs, but Mr Blair was determined to have a strong relationship with the Republican President. Although they had initial reservations about his political leanings she and her husband learnt to appreciate “a very funny, charming man with a quirky sense of humour”....

Blaming climate change for the storm that ravaged southern Myanmar a week ago is neither helpful in a humanitarian crisis nor scientifically defensible. But it's a neat diversionary tactic that seems to be working. Al Gore described the cyclone as an example of "consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming." Mr. Gore conceded a comparable storm struck the same region as recently as 50 years ago. The earlier storm and those that preceded it over the long march of time were less damaging, for obvious reasons: population and government. Myanmar, once known as Burma,...

Sunday Funnies: Al Gore Says 'Global Warming Has Fried My Brain' Photo of Noel Sheppard. By Noel Sheppard | May 11, 2008 - 10:12 ET For several years since Nobel Laureate Al Gore started his campaign to frighten people into thinking they're destroying the planet every time they drive their cars, climate realists around the world have wondered just how much of the global warming myth the former Vice President actually believes. Syndicated columnist Jay Ambrose, in a satirical piece entitled "A Gore Confession" published Sunday, suggests what the real culprit might be: the warming has fried Gore's brain. But...

Centrica warns on wind farm costsCentrica, one of the UK's biggest energy generators, has warned that the prospect of making money from wind farms is looking "marginal". The company says that the rising cost of off-shore wind farms could end up ruining the government's renewable energy targets. The comments come a week after Shell withdrew from a project that was set to become the world's largest wind farm. The government wants 33 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity built by 2020. Mr Sambhi, Centrica's director of power business unit, says the firm is still planning to build three new wind farms...

Students at a California public school have written a series of letters to Chicago's Heartland Institute, which works to discover and develop free-market solutions to society's problems, attacking its members for "destroying our planet" by refusing to endorse the politics of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" film. According to students in the sixth-grade class of teacher Michael Steria at David A. Brown Middle School, the institute consists of "fools" and "horrible people." "I think your (sic) fools for denying G.W. you know it could kill us all & you're just adding to it. I want you to help stop G.W....

Junk Science: Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests?Gore's reaction to the death and destruction caused by a cyclone ravaging Burma was to utter an emphatic "I told you so" Tuesday on National Public Radio. In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" broadcast, the jolly green giant made the charge while talking about the paperback release of his ironically named book, "The Assault on Reason." Ignoring the fact that the rising death toll is due in part to an incompetent, isolationist and authoritarian...

After George W. Bush won Florida in 2000--O.K., I apologize to my Democrat readers for legitimizing Bush by using the word won. Also, I apologize to the Republicans for delegitimizing Bush by apologizing to the Democrats ... This is what Florida has done to us. Nearly eight years after Bush--um, "became President"? Can we agree on that?--the Florida recount still grips our politics, down to its semantics. To choose a verb is to take sides. Florida is not just a state but a state of mind: the widely held attitude that the game is rigged (by the courts, the media,...

Thirty days after Steve McIntyre caught NASA cooking climate history again - this time in a feeble attempt to somehow conceal the alarmist-embarrassing  downward trend since 1998 -- Al Gore shamelessly portrayed Saturday's Myanmar cyclone catastrophe as a ‘consequence' of global warming.  A mere 16 days after NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation's cool phase shift would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, Gore told NPR that the "trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global...

ONE DOWN, TWO TO GOMay 7, 2008 Well, it looks like it's the end of the road for Hillary. Time for her to pack up her pantsuits and go back to ... wherever it is she's pretending to be living these days. Now we just have to get rid of the other two. Perhaps if I endorse Obama ... This week, Bill Clinton lost his second presidential election for a protege. Ronald Reagan was so popular, he not only won a 49-state landslide re-election for himself, but he also won a symbolic third term for his boob of a vice...

It was bound to happen eventually - someone from the global warming movement tying the recent Myanmar cyclone to the so-called climate change phenomenon. Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR's May 6 "Fresh Air" broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross about the release of his book, "The Assault on Reason," in paperback. "And as we're talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated," Gore said....

Al Gore did not rule out an endorsement in the Democratic presidential race, but all but ruled out a speculative scenario some have spun out as the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama goes on and on -- namely, that he would emerge as a compromise nominee with either Clinton or Obama as his running mate. In an interview today on National Public Radio, Gore at first laughed and was somewhat at a loss for words when he was asked about the scenario. "In a year of remote contingencies, that's about as remote as you could possibly imagine," he...

Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming. Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR’s May 6 “Fresh Air” broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross about the release of his book, “The Assault on Reason,” in paperback. “And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to...

Al Gore, who galvanized public opinion with his advocacy on global warming, sees danger in another poisoned environment, this one metaphorical: In his book The Assault on Reason, just published in paperback, he argues that what used to be called civil discourse is threatened by a combination of public apathy and political cynicism. In our infotainment-mad culture, Gore writes, the public attention span is short, the media are easily distracted, and a politics driven by fear and uninterested in facts has undermined the essential functions of democracy. "When evidence that any reasonable person can see and understand is completely ignored...

Putting in 14, 15, sometimes 16 hour days as they compete for the Democratic nomination, Mrs. Clinton and Senator Barack Obama are usually in the air two or three times – or more – from morning to night. One day last week Mrs. Clinton hop-scotched across Indiana, from north to south and back north again, as she campaigned before Tuesday’s primary, with a few dozen reporters, photographers and campaign aides hustling from plane to bus to plane to keep up with her schedule.

If the Earth has a fever, as former Vice President Al Gore suggests, it's not showing signs of it. According to Climateaudit.org's Steve McIntyre, global sea ice has actually increased. "On a global basis, world sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were ‘unprecedented' for the month of April in over 25 years," Steve McIntyre wrote on Climateaudit.org on May 4. "Levels are the third highest (for April) since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982." That data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Snow and Ice Data Center...

Last night, Al Gore preached to the choir. The polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, droughts are dragging on, floods are getting stronger and today alone, an additional 170 million tons of carbon dioxide has been dumped into the Earth's atmosphere, he told a crowd of believers at Value City Arena. "The planet has a fever," he said. It needs to be saved, to be fixed immediately. "This is our home. We don't have another planet to go to. Don't let anybody tell you we're going to get on rocket ships and go to a new planet....

America faces severe housing, financial, energy, food, unemployment and recessionary shocks. But legislators, bureaucrats and presidential candidates seem intent on making them worse, by imposing onerous climate change rules and restricting fossil fuel development and use. Even the White House now wants "reasonable and responsible" legislation, to avert a "regulatory nightmare" from overlapping state and federal climate rules. It falsely assumes costly federal regulations, emission mandates and hidden cap-and-trade taxes would be preferable. Earth warmed a degree over the last quarter-century, as it emerged further from the Little Ice Age, and humans may have played a role. However, hundreds of...

Mounting evidence of lower temperature trends despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels is becoming a real problem for the greenhouse gas crowd.  And reports that the cooling appears to follow a period of dormant solar activity aren't likely to ease their anxieties. Indeed, without an immediate alarmist course correction, years of "the science is settled" campaigning could prove for naught, as prolonged temperature dips decimate the primary anthropogenic argument.  After all, Lord Gore has shouted the IPCC's proclamation of a 0.3°C warming over the next decade from virtually every rooftop.  Given new data projecting the contrary, he and his green hordes...

A notable story of recent months should have been the evidence pouring in from all sides to cast doubts on the idea that the world is inexorably heating up. The proponents of man-made global warming have become so rattled by how the forecasts of their computer models are being contradicted by the data that some are rushing to modify the thesis. So a German study, published by Nature last week, claimed that, while the world is definitely warming, it may cool down until 2015 "while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions". It...

Even as the MSM wing of the party warns fellow Democrats that the prolonged WWE-style grudge match between Barack Obama and the Clinton machine may tear the party apart...they may already have identified an issue they hope the party can coalesce around, like some sort of political superglue. Lesley Stahl’s 60 Minutes profile of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent an inordinate amount of time mis-stating facts about an eight-year old legal issue: “Of all the cases that have come before him on the court, Bush v. Gore may have been the most controversial. It has been reported that he...

Methodology used by NASA to estimate rates of climate change are resulting in dramatic shifts in previously published historical temperature data, causing figures for estimated global surface temperature prior to 1970 to now be lower and figures since 1970 to now be higher – and appearing to provide evidence for those who say the Earth is warming. John Goetz, writing last month in the science blog Climate Audit, analyzed the way NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculates estimated global surface temperatures and showed that the addition of new, contemporary data could "have a ripple effect all the way back...

A paper published in scientific journal Nature this week has reignited the debate about Global Warming, by predicting that the earth won't be getting any warmer until 2015. ... But how will we know whether the earth is warming or cooling? Today, it all depends on the data source. Two authorities provide us with analysis of long-term surface temperature trends. Both agree on the global temperature trend until 1998, at which time a sharp divergence occurred. The UK Meteorological Office's Hadley Center for Climate Studies Had-Crut data shows worldwide temperatures declining since 1998. According to Hadley's data, the earth is...

Can you sue a snakeoil salesman? Al Gore may be facing a potential lawsuit over Global Warming according to the British newspaper, the Telegraph. The medicine peddlers used a number of tricks and stunts. The larger traveling shows, employing advance men to herald their arrival, entered town with circus-like fanfare, typically with a band leading the procession of wagons. Skits and other diversions were used to attract audiences, who eventually were treated to the "Lecture" (which, when medicine shows expanded into radio, became the commercial). Assistants who moved through the crowds were often garbed as Quakers to lend an air...

This is the first in a two-part series. When chief 9-11 operative Mohamed Atta arrived in the United States in June 2000, he had good reason to believe not only that Al Gore would be the next president, but that he would also be one tough adversary. For Atta’s benefactor, Osama bin Laden, this was just as well. He was spoiling for a fight, and his beef was with Clinton and Gore, not Texas governor George Bush. Truth be told, the boys of summer had been annoying bin Laden for the last eight years. They had particularly irked him with...

Poet T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month. Looking at April 2008, you can add snowiest. Storms late in the month made it the whitest April ever in places such as Park Rapids and Detroit Lakes in Minnesota, with the latter city more than doubling its previous snowfall record for the month. The first 70-degree day of the year usually arrives in April, but the highest the mercury reached in Fargo last month was 68 degrees on the 15th, said John Wheeler, WDAY-TV meteorologist. The last time Fargo saw an April without a 70-degree day was 1996, he said. The...

A 56-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to stealing $300,000 from the United States Forest Service using a purchase card program that she helped to develop while she was employed by the agency in Milwaukee. As part of her plea to one count of theft of government property, Suzanne Poetz, of Milwaukee, acknowledged more than 150 instances of theft, according to Steven M. Biskupic, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Under the terms of her plea, Poetz will be required to pay back the money stolen as restitution. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and...

Breaking News: Scientists call on UN Climate Committee to admit they are wrong and renounce Global Warming claims and policies This was sent by Lars Larson . Yesterday, one of the scientists involved was on his radio show with news of this new information. Please pass it around! Tell the president and McCain, since they seem to be out of the loop! The UN's Climate Committee leadership and policies were today challenged by four scientists, including one Nobel Peace Prize winner, from around the world to admit that CO2 centred Global Warming theories are now disproved by observations and to...

The investment vehicle headed by Al Gore has closed a new $683m fund to invest in early-stage environmental companies and has mounted a robust defence of green investing. The Climate Solutions Fund will be one of the biggest in the growing market for investment funds with an environmental slant. The fund will be focused on equity investments in small companies in four sectors: renewable energy; energy efficiency technologies; energy from biofuels and biomass; and the carbon trading markets. This is the second fund from Generation Investment Management, chaired by the former vice-president of the US and managed by David Blood,...

The investment vehicle headed by Al Gore has closed a new $683m fund to invest in early-stage environmental companies and has mounted a robust defence of green investing. The Climate Solutions Fund will be one of the biggest in the growing market for investment funds with an environmental slant. The fund will be focused on equity investments in small companies in four sectors: renewable energy; energy efficiency technologies; energy from biofuels and biomass; and the carbon trading markets. This is the second fund from Generation Investment Management, chaired by the former vice-president of the US and managed by David Blood,...

"Unfortunately, the recovery of the ozone hole has a dark side: The return of a thin, suspended blanket of stratospheric ozone will raise temperatures over the southern polar region, according to a new study by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The scientists, who relied on a NASA computer model for their predictions, also report that the healing of the hole will weaken winds that currently shield the Antarctic interior from warmer air masses to the north. Antarctica may not be the only continent affected: The...

You couldn't have missed it, if you tried. There were TV specials on National Geographic, CNN, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel, among many others. Oprah commemorated the event and every newscast seemingly reminded viewers of the day's significance. It was Earth Day, a holiday meant to celebrate the Earth, but something just didn't feel right about it. Perhaps it's because Earth Day seems to be transforming into ...

Anchorage continues to dig out from a snowfall that set a record for the day and the month.The National Weather Service says 17.2 inches fell at its office just south of Anchorage's international airport and 22 inches fell in northeast Anchorage on Friday and Saturday. The heaviest snow fell between 3 and 6 p.m. Friday at a rate of almost two inches per hour. The monthly total at the weather service office is now 29.7 inches, breaking a record from 1963 when 27.6 inches fell during April.

Here’s an inconvenient truth: Long before man-caused global warming kills people and topples governments, the man-caused scare over global warming is going to have the same effect. Unlike the myth of man-made global warming, the scare is real, and it is here today. The secretary-general of the United Nations told reporters in Austria on Friday that the sudden and steep rise in food prices worldwide has developed into a global crisis. With shortages of affordable food spreading around the world, food-related unrest has broken out in nations as diverse as Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia and Afghanistan. One of the base causes...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked the government to cut "skyrocketing" food prices by waiving half of the renewable fuel standard for ethanol made from grain. The Republican governor from the oil-producing state said in a statement that such a waiver was "the best, quickest way" to ease rising food costs before lasting damage was done. "We're diversifying our state's energy portfolio at a rapid rate, but this misguided mandate is significantly affecting Texans' family food bill," he added. Perry said that over the last three years, the price of corn has shot up 138 percent around the world, while global...

President George W. Bush has just announced his goal to stabilize greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025. To get there, he proposes new fuel-economy standards for autos, and lower emissions from power plants built in the next 10 to 15 years. Pending legislation in the Senate from Joe Lieberman and John Warner would cut emissions even further – by 66% by 2050. No one has a clue how to do this. Because there is no substitute technology to achieve these massive reductions, we'll just have to get by with less energy. For years, records from surface thermometers showed a global warming trend...

A remarkable thing happened Thursday: a press member wanted to ask Nobel Laureate Al Gore about the growing international food crisis and how it relates to ethanol and global warming hysteria. Not surprisingly, the man who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate fourteen years ago mandating the use of ethanol wasn't available, and a spokesman for his hysteria-driving Alliance for Climate Protection declined to comment. Isn't that convenient? Regardless, the good news is that press outlets continue to recognize this unholy connection, and that someone, even at the conservative New York Sun, would deign to report it (emphasis added...

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them. This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it...

It's late April, but Old Man Winter was showing Friday that he isn't finished with Minnesota just yet. Heavy snow began falling in parts of western Minnesota, where a handful of schools closed early. Ivanhoe reported 2 inches of snow as of 1 p.m., and 5.5 inches was reported in the western town of Donnelly near Morris by 4 p.m. By 7:30 p.m., Appleton and Madison both reported 8 inches, and by 9 p.m. Donnelly had nearly 9 inches. The National Weather Service said a large area of western and northern Minnesota could get 6 inches to 15 inches by...

The Global Warming Hoax-a-thon By Bridget Geegan Blanton Beware the pandering politician. Where there are votes to be won, the truth will be spun. Listening to politicians out on the stump, you’d think we were in midst of the apocalypse. Frankly, I’m weary of candidates avoiding a real discussion on tough issues. Why don’t they just spare us the insult of those televised debates? Where’s the actual debate? It’s predictable and boring as the main stream media poses questions that are simply spring boards for carefully crafted commentary. Talk about compelling television, how about a real debate on our energy...

World might be heading towards Ice Age 23 Apr, 2008, 1327 hrs IST, ANI CANBERRA: Scientists have warned that the world might once again be heading towards an Ice Age, with global warming approaching a possible end. Evidence in support of this theory has come from pictures obtained from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which showed no spots on the sun, thus determining that sunspot activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year. A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark. Some scientists believe a...

Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuels The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels. With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down. One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn...

The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels. With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain Mr. Gore was not available for an interview yesterday on the food crisis, according to his spokeswoman. A spokesman for Mr. Gore’s public campaign to address climate change, the Alliance for Climate Protection, declined to comment for this article.

My esteem for the political intellect of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is second to no one's. That said, by appearing in the latest Al Gore propaganda commercial, he joins a disturbingly growing number of ostensibly green-turning Republicans -- our president among them -- who thereby cast doubt upon their own conservative resolve. Harder still to reconcile is this: unlike that given by George Bush last week, Newt's explanation for his apparent duplicity rings excruciatingly hollow and ultimately fraudulent. Leaving dumbfounded admirers to wonder whether they'll ever learn why -- and why now? The ad by Gore's Alliance...