Free Republic

Physicist, meteorologist testify that the climate agenda is ‘disastrous’ for America Two prominent climate scientists have taken on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new rules to cut CO2 emissions in electricity generation, arguing in testimony that the regulations “will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justifiable reason.” Citing extensive data to support their case, William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argued that the claims used by the EPA to justify the new regulations are not based on scientific facts but rather...

It seems that Steven Guilbeault, the Environment Minister of Canada, isn’t a popular as he thinks he should be, what with saving the world and all. His “suck it up, Shriners” message, announced yesterday as part of the Trudeau government’s draft regulations to move Canada ever closer to NetZero, have really ruffled some feathers.Especially that part about “costing more” but, oh, saving you money on the backside because of gas and oil expenditures.RIGHTEveryone’s heard the line about renewables being cheaper and no one’s falling for it any more..Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s newly announced plan to largely phase out the use...

There’s no denying that we’re enduring a heat wave this summer. The eco-alarmists want us to blame our discomfort on one chemical compound that is vital to life on Earth — carbon dioxide. CO2 is regularly demonized as a “greenhouse gas,” and increasing atmospheric concentrations of it are reputedly taking us down a doomsday path toward oblivion.Al Gore warned us about this in his 2006 Oscar-winning propaganda piece, “An Inconvenient Truth.” You can hear what he said in the video below, and remember that schoolchildren at the time were forced to endure his scaremongering about supposedly human-caused increases in atmospheric...

ExxonMobil Corp. announced last week that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Denbury Inc. in an all-stock transaction valued at $4.9 billion. The acquisition will make ExxonMobil the largest owner and operator of carbon dioxide, or CO2, pipelines in the U.S. at 1,300 miles, with almost 925 miles of that network concentrated in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. Denbury recently announced its plans to develop an 8,500-acre CO2 sequestration site about 50 miles northeast of Baton Rouge, as reported in Daily Report. Named Virgo, the site will have an estimated storage capacity of at least 100 million metric...

When three years ago we were told that if we stayed inside for 15 days we could flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases, there was no real effort to respond with civil disobedience. It was a profound mistake, one we paid dearly for and will again, if we don’t stand up to the tyranny. Yes, we know it was President Donald Trump who issued in March 2020 a set of guidelines that called for 15 days to slow the spread by limiting our travel and staying away from social settings. At the end of March, under more pressure from “experts”...

This morning the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington held oral argument in the case of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council v. EPA. That’s the case where a hardy band of citizen petitioners (CHECC) challenges the 2009 finding of EPA that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare by reason of their potential to warm the atmosphere. That finding, known as the Endangerment Finding or EF, is the underlying basis for the all-of-government regulatory assault on the fossil fuel industry and the energy economy currently being conducted by the Biden Administration. I...

European Parliament has formally approved a law that will effectively end the sale of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles in the European Union by 2035, calling for a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions for any new cars sold, according to Reuters. The 27-nation union agreed to the changes in October 2022, but has now formalized the deal, which enforces a 55% reduction in emissions for vehicles by 2030. Levels for CO2 for 2021 were set at a target of 37.5%. Vans will get a slight advantage in the market, requiring a a 50% cut by 2030, compared with 2021 levels. Just...

Scientists are scrambling to explain why the continent of Antarctica has shown Net Zero warming for the last seven decades and almost certainly much longer. The lack of warming over a significant portion of the Earth undermines the unproven hypothesis that the carbon dioxide humans add to the atmosphere is the main determinant of global climate.Under ‘settled’ science requirements, the significant debate over the inconvenient Antarctica data is of necessity being conducted well away from prying eyes in the mainstream media. Promoting the Net Zero political agenda, the Guardian recently topped up readers’ alarm levels with the notion that “unimaginable...

The Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. EPA decision a couple of weeks ago has brought forth a big wave of hand wringing in the precincts of the left. How oh how are we now going to save the planet, if our friends at the EPA can no longer order up a nation-wide energy system transformation on their own authority? A couple of examples of the genre come from Ron Brownstein in the Atlantic, and from Coral Davenport in the New York Times, both from Friday July 15. The funny thing about these pieces, and many others like them, is that...

To adapt what Stalin said of the Pope, how many divisions does the Supreme Court have? That seems to be the implicit slogan of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who on Thursday ignored the High Court’s recent ruling with a proposed rule requiring states to reduce CO2 emissions on highways—that is, banish gas-powered vehicles. In West Virginia v. EPA, the Court ruled that regulatory agencies can’t impose costly new regulations without a clear direction from Congress. The feds had interpreted an obscure corner of the Clean Air Act to impose costly climate rules on power plants. Now the Federal Highway Administration...

Coal is a gift that we have in abundance. The vast reserves of coal guarantee the United States energy for hundreds of years. Coal is efficient. No fuel, other than uranium, is cheaper. Coal burns clean in modern plants. Strip-mining coal in the modern way improves the landscape. According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. demonstrated coal reserve base is 477 billion 2,000-pound tons, enough for more than 500 years at current consumption rates. In the eyes of the diminishing crowd of believers in catastrophic global warming, coal is evil, a demon. Why? Because it is mostly carbon, and...

Step aside, elected Members of Congress. If you can’t pass cap and trade legislation, The Environmental Protection Agency will move in with massively complex and costly regulations that would micromanage just about every aspect of the economy. They announced today that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten public health and the environment. Since 85 percent of the U.S. economy runs on fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, imposing a cost on CO2 is equivalent to placing an economy-wide tax on energy use. The kind of industrial-strength EPA red tape that the agency could enforce in the name...

As world leaders in Paris scramble to reach a climate agreement aimed to mitigate the consequences of untamed greenhouse gas emissions, they have been dealt a rare dose of good news. Scientists writing in the journal Nature Climate Change estimate that for the first time in the last 15 years, global carbon dioxide emissions have flatlined, and possibly even declined. "It is difficult to overstate the significance of this development," said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. "What it shows is that we are indeed now turning the corner in transition from a...

“Green” started as the stand against pollution. To the “greenies,” that pollution seldom seemed small enough, especially when the pollutants were made by evil humans rather than by nature itself. Green is no more good for saving the environment than it is for protecting the people. Green wears the badge of hypocrisy. Being green requires minimizing pollutants in products, places, people, and the environment. But it depends on what is a pollutant and how little of it is little enough. The EPA, for example, has declared CO2 a pollutant, the invisible, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic substance that sustains all life on...

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival is happening now in Austin, Texas. Running from March 9 to 22, it’s a massive film, interactive and music festival that is nearly 20 years old. The festival brings together designers, developers, investors, entrepreneurs and politicians for panels and discussions about technology and innovation. For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to “punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should...

Step-by-Step Guide to Entry, Descent, and Landing.On the evening of January 3, 2004, Spirit is scheduled to land on Mars. Here's a step-by-step guide to what will happen. To watch mission controllers live during entry, descent and landing, please tune into NASA TV at 6:45 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

Images reveal 'sea of ice' near Mars' equator Associated Press AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Images relayed by a European space probe reveal the existence of a sea of ice close to the equator of Mars, scientists said Tuesday at a conference in the Netherlands. The existence of water or ice would significantly increase the chance microscopic life may also be found on Mars. The evidence comes from photographs - not yet published - taken last year by the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe currently orbiting the red planet. Scientists have long theorized there was once water on Mars and data...

There was a small surprise: Viking found nitrogen to be the second most abundant gas in the Martian air, but Curiosity’s measurements revealed a nearly equal abundance of nitrogen and argon, a stable noble gas. Mission scientists are puzzled, but suspect it might have to do with the different tools used to sample the atmosphere.

A chemical study of Martian meteorites implies that the planet has always been cold and was rarely above freezing.Writing in Science, researchers have been able to determine the maximum temperature the rock experienced. There is no evidence that it was ever warm, they say, as it records near surface conditions for four billion years. The water erosional features seen on Mars must have been made during very brief periods, they conclude. Thermal historyAlthough the current average temperature at the Martian equator is about minus 55 Celsius, many scientists believe that the Red Planet was once warm enough for water...

resident Obama will attend a United Nations climate summit in New York this week where he will try to gather support for an international agreement to curb emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which he labels as carbon pollution. This could not be further from the truth. Talk with most any biologist or botanist and you will find an opposite perspective, one in which CO2 is the elixir of life. We all learned in primary school that atmospheric CO2 is the building block of plant life, the primary raw material that they utilize during the process of photosynthesis. As demonstrated in...