Free Republic

Professor Murry Salby, chair of climate at Macquarie University, has unleashed on global warming alarmism in a lecture this week to the Sydney Institute. Salby has worked at leading research institutions, including the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, Princeton University, and the University of Colorado, and is the author of Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics, and Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate, due out in 2011. Salby’s argument is that the usual evidence given for the rise in CO2 being man-made is mistaken. (podcast of lecture available)

HOUSTON, June 14 -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Qatar Petroleum reported the Pearl gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City sold its first commercial shipment of GTL gas oil. The sale marked the start of production of GTL products from the plant. In coming months, production is to ramp up from the Pearl GTL project’s first train, and the second train is expected to start up before yearend. The plant is expected to reach full production capacity by mid-2012. It is the largest energy project ever launched in the Qatar, officials said. Qatar's Minister of Energy and Industry...

Throughout history the rise and fall of empires isn't slow or cyclical, as we like to think, but arrhythmic...it mostly happens very, very suddenly. America is a superpower on the edge of chaos, according to economic historian and author Niall Ferguson. U.S. debt levels, he says, and its unwillingness to address the problem, has put it in the same category as other great empires which have collapsed throughout the ages. Ferguson argues the world is changing. There's the rise of authoritarian China as a super-power; a Keynesian president leading a weakened United States; the re-emergence of democratic India as a...

Starting next year Paypal will have to start reporting to the IRS. The selling limits will be 200 items or $20K before they report. This tax change was part of the ’08 stimulus. Reporting on 200 items annually is a real killer. That’s a mere 17 items a month. We’ve already shut our eBay business down. It's simply not worth the effort. ... . The draft Form 1099-K for 2011 implements payments reporting to the IRS for PayPal and credit card merchants, much as already happens with forms W-2 or 1099-MISC for employees and independent contractors. ... Starting in 2011,...

...The wave is building and when it reaches our shores, it will hit with the force of a tsunami. The wave is propelled by government spending and crested with unfunded pension obligations. The Pew Center on the States wrote in The Trillion Dollar Gap (February 2010), “A $1 trillion gap exists between the $3.35 trillion in pension, health care and other retirement benefits states have promised their current and retired workers as of fiscal year 2008 and the $2.35 trillion they have on hand to pay for them.” Like any tsunami, the wave began long ago and very far out...

Legislators Appeal To Constitutional Court To Stop U.S Warships From Entering Costa Rican Waters The decision authorizing the patrol of Costa Rican waters by U.S. warships is being contested by a group of legislators, headed by Gloria Bejarano, who filed an action of unconstitutionality with the Sala Constitucional (Costa Rica's constitutional court). The legislators believe the authorization that was voted on and granted last week for the entry of 46 naval warships, 200 helicopters, war planes and 7.000 Marines as confirmed by the president of the Legislative Assembly, Gerardo Villanueva, violates Costa Rica's Political Constitution.

Petrol and power prices have risen sharply in New Zealand after the government introduced a controversial emissions trading scheme.

The number of states in various stages of passing laws to shield their citizens against ObmamanationCare (tm) now appears to exceed the number necessary to call a Constitutional Convention. Question for FR: are the present dangers to liberty sufficiently grave enough to risk the potential dangers of a Convention called to bring Leviathan to heel?

... All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to...

Can states secede? There are three levels on which this question can be answered: the inalienable right of secession, the international law of secession, and the US law of secession. All three say yes.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Rampant reports of hackers tapping into electricity grids and planning for further subterfuge are causing some people to question the government's new push for a nationwide "smart grid." ... Joshua Pennell is chief executive of IOActive, a security services and software assurance firm in Seattle. In a presentation to the Department of Homeland Security, Pennell says the Smart Grid has "inherent security flaws" and could further expose the country to attacks on our critical power infrastructure. His firm conducted industry research and claims that a smart grid could "expose utility companies to possible fraud, extortion...

The top leaders of the 5,3241 charities in America evaluated by Charity Navigator2 earn an average salary of $148,9723. This represents a modest pay raise of 2.55% over the previous year studied, and is similar to last year’s pay raise of 2.34%. All together, the salaries total nearly $770 million. Although this is a considerable amount of money, CEO compensation accounts for just 3.32% of an average organization's total spending....

Scientists have been warning us about the devastating impact global warming could have if human-made greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, and many believe that these impacts are being felt now. Because of this sense of urgency to reverse global warming, pressure has been mounting on the three branches of government at state and national levels to take action to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, corporations that emit greenhouse gases, ranging from energy companies to toymakers, are becoming increasingly exposed to regulatory orders and lawsuits for which they will tender claims to their insurers. Enter an era of...

Study finds Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes The Arctic seabed is as explosive geologically as it is politically judging by the "fountains" of gas and molten lava that have been blasting out of underwater volcanoes near the North Pole. "Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process," according to an international team that sent unmanned probes to the strange fiery world beneath the Arctic ice. They returned with images and data showing that red-hot magma has been rising from deep inside the earth and blown the tops off dozens of submarine volcanoes, four kilometres below the...

Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme. Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.

Where is the outrage from US victim-mongering groups who work vigorously and loudly to protest any violation of the rights of their supporters? Feminists? (silence) Disabled Advocates? (silence). Headline writers? (happy because this carnage advances the narrative of chaos and defest). Scan Google's own selection of top stories on this topic. A precious few headlines, in my opinion, faithfully convey the depravity of the jihadists in exploiting mentally disabled women was bomb carriers.

A reader sent me this item with a very disturbing, but hardly surprising, item about Chinese war preparations. The newsmax story states that China has a youth program “cloaked in secrecy” which is training 50,000,000 Chinese youth to prepare for warfare against the USA. The youth militarization program is “compulsory” and is run by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The article states that “Young people in the camps are taught self-defense and study advanced weaponry, including American Black Hawk helicopters and aircraft carriers.” The fact that Chinese youth are being trained to recognize (and fight against) US weapon systems make...

In a story dated August 27, 2007, The Times of London reported that “China has hacked into the computers of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery and three other German ministries in an extraordinary economic espionage operation.” German authorities mounted “the biggest digital defence ever mounted by the German state” in response to the Chinese hackers who were “siphoning [information] off almost daily…to Lanzhou…and Beijing.” The Times article added “that the operation must have been steered by the [Chinese] state and, in particular, the People’s Liberation Army.” The article noted that “there is no mistaking German anger.” A cover story about this subject...

The August 20, 2007 Washington Times National Weekly Edition had a short article in Bill Gertz’s “Inside the Ring” section on page 16 which is vitally important. However, it was ignored by the national media. The article states that “the senior Air Force commander [General Paul Hester] in the Pacific last week threw cold water on a Chinese proposal to divide up the Pacific Ocean into US and Chinese spheres of influence.” The Chinese proposal would have yielded the eastern Pacific Region to the USA while allowing China dominance in the western Pacific. General Hester stated that “our policy is...

In following the discussion of global warming and related issues in the press and the blogosphere, I have been struck repeatedly by the assumption or expression of certain beliefs that strike me as highly problematical. Many writers who are not scientists themselves are trading on the prestige of science and the authority of scientists. Reference to “peer-reviewed research” and to an alleged “scientific consensus” are regarded as veritable knock-out blows by many commentators. Yet many of those who make such references appear to me to be more or less ignorant of how science as a form of knowledge-seeking and scientists...