Free Republic

The coronavirus pandemic could take away the momentum that has built in the past few years for new federal policies to counter climate change. “What I fear is everyone is so focused on the problem at hand that I don't think climate issues are on the front burner again,” said Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida, a Republican who supports a carbon tax. “All the eggs are scrambled until these things are solved and steady. I hope we don't lose the momentum we've gained among Republicans," Rooney said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. Polls over recent years have shown...

Actress Ellen Page said President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are guilty of “environmental racism. She accused Trump of “destroying the world” with his climate change policy. Page, who makes her directorial debut with the Netflix documentary There’s Something in the Water, told Variety how she was inspired to make the film by Dalhousie University professor Ingrid R. G. Waldron’s book There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous & Black Communities. “Environmental racism is essentially the disproportionate placement of landfills, hazardous industry, et cetera, put next to indigenous and black and other marginalized communities,” Ellen...

Actor Idris Elba recently tested positive for the new Chinese coronavirus. But if you thought he'd be saddened by that, I have news for you. Elba believes it's perfectly alright. You see, the COVID-19 virus is simply earth taking revenge for climate change. "It is incredible. One of the upsides of this whole drama is that we are forced to think together as a race," Elba told Oprah Winfrey via video chat for her new "Oprah Talks" show on Apple TV+. "Our world has been taking a kicking. We damaged our world, and it’s no surprise that our world is...

On Sunday's Velshi show, one day after MSNBC host Ali Velshi recommended using the coronavirus pandemic to push for more welfare programs in the U.S. to fix capitalism, he devoted a segment to talking up the possibility of also using the deadly pandemic to pressure the airline and fossil fuel industries to adhere to more regulations to effect climate change. At 9:51 a.m. Eastern, Velshi took the time to note "silver linings" in the epidemic: ALI VELSHI: It's been a hard couple of hours of TV to watch on a weekend morning. With this ongoing national crisis, it can be...

“The dam has been broken,” author and nationally syndicated radio host Dennis Prager warns. “Maybe it was necessary. But when dams break, flooding follows.” In a Tuesday piece for American Greatness, “Why the Remedy May Be Worse Than the Disease,” Prager issues a dire warning for a country reeling from a self-imposed shutdown. In the scramble to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Americans must be vigilant against the kind of cure some may prescribe. Prager issues a prediction: “If the government can order society to cease functioning, from restaurants and other businesses to schools, due to a possible health disaster,...

Do Electric Vehicles really give off zero emissions? While Electric Vehicles (EVs) do not emit CO2 like traditional combustion engine cars, they actually do still have particulate emissions which pose a substantial threat to clean air. Batteries required to power cars with no assistance from a traditional engine are quite heavy and place a much larger burden on tires than traditional cars. As the EVs rack up miles, particulates from tires, break dust, and re-agitated roadway pollutants are all mixed into the environment, creating potentially harmful air quality. As the increased workload on braking systems of EVs became a known...

Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists, increasingly overshadowed by the coronavirus, have been discussing new and ever more desperate ways to grab attention for their next big publicity stunt. Mooted tactics include: committing suicide in public (perhaps at the UN’s next climate summit in Glasgow later this year); hunger strike to the death; painting parliament green; spraying traffic lights black; blocking every station, airport, and motorway in Britain; and “scare the f**k out of people”.

London’s leafy streets and gardens have long been prized for their beauty — and more recently their ability to counteract carbon emissions and improve air quality. But the value of urban trees can also be measured with money. A new report from Britain’s Office of National Statistics estimates tree cover saved the capital more than 5 billion pounds ($6.56 billion) from 2014 to 2018 through air cooling alone. Additionally, by keeping summer temperatures bearable for workers, trees prevented productivity losses of almost 11 billion pounds. The estimates underline just how vital the role trees play is in making cities comfortable...

In 2014, Joe Duggan started reaching out to climate scientists to ask them a question: how did climate change make them feel? “I was just blown away when I started getting the letters back,” he says. Duggan, a science communicator at Australian National University, set up a website and starting publishing the mostly handwritten responses. “[Professor] Katrin Meissner was one of the first, and her letter really hit me. It was so ... unscience-y. Almost poetic.” “It makes me feel sad. And it scares me,” Meissner wrote. “It scares me more than anything else. I see a group of people...

For those who seek to panic the public into handing control of all economic activity to the state, the prospect of rising sea levels inundating coastal cities has been the most useful tool. By propagating the theory that your SUV, air conditioning and jet travel will drown New York and Miami, and submerge Pacific island out of existence, the warmists plan to extract trillions of dollars from advanced economies, and distribute them to cronies making solar cells, electric cars, windmills, and other expensive substitutes, and to the rulers of third world countries allegedly to be devastated (with “administrative costs” sticking...

An Italian politician on Wednesday gave 17-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg some fatherly advice to go back to school. Pietro Fiocchi, a member of the European Parliament, said Thunberg should consider going back to school during a meeting of the Environment Council at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. The Italian politician began by thanking Thunberg for her “important role in raising public awareness on this fundamental topic.” “At the same time, I would like to give an advice as a father gives an advice to a daughter — go back to school and go back to a normal...

Climate change and sea level rise are currently on track to wipe out half the world’s sandy beaches by 2100, researchers warned Monday. Even if humanity sharply reduces the fossil fuel pollution that drives global warming, more than a third of the planet’s sandy shorelines could disappear by then, crippling coastal tourism in countries large and small, they reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Apart from tourism, sandy beaches often act as the first line of defence from coastal storms and flooding, and without them impacts of extreme weather events will probably be higher,” lead author Michalis Vousdoukas, a...

Jeff Bezos’ $10 billion commitment to fight climate change, which he announced last week, brings to mind an episode of “South Park” that aired during the financial crisis. A succession of characters put their money into the market only to see it go instantly to zero before their eyes. Based on the best science, or at least the most officially condoned, Mr. Bezos would have only the vaguest idea what he was getting for his money. That’s because scientists can estimate only within a giant, squishy margin of error how much warming might be avoided from a given cut in...

If atmospheric science is not science, what is it? It is the nearest thing to a religion, particularly for the liberal secular humanists, atheists, and agnostics of the left. It has a pretty close copy of the concept of original sin and drips with guilt. It is the lever that politicians on the left will use to change our economy, violate our constitution, and restrict our freedoms. It is offered as the "big problem" that only "big government" or maybe "world government" can solve. This stuff is "junk science." These folks read ice core samples and tree rings the way...

Greta Thunberg’s mother, Malena Ernman is promoting her family’s new book, “Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis.” She is using her daughter’s story as a tool for publicity. If the phrase “our house is on fire” is familiar it is because Greta frequently uses it when speaking in public about climate change. The parents of Greta work in the entertainment industry so they crave the stage. Ernman is a well-known opera singer in Europe and Svante Thunberg, Greta’s father, is an actor. Both parents have essentially all but given up their own...

It's cold tonight, and I sit at my desk, wishing it were warmer. Even with central heat and air, winter is a difficult time. My sinuses are inflamed, my knuckles are dry and red, and my joints are sore with the cold. Every year I dread it more. And now environmentalists like Jeff Bezos want to make it colder. It's no accident that Shakespeare wrote of "the winter of our discontent" (Richard III) and of "the icy fang / And churlish chiding of the winter's wind" (As You Like It). Shakespeare, who lived through some of the coldest decades of...

On Sunday's What's Eating America?, hosted by celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern, the second episode of the new food-focused MSNBC series engaged in scaremongering with predictions about the food industry being hurt by climate change, and indicted "deniers" for not believing climate change is caused by human activity. The show used several sources who are liberal activists critical of conservatives who are skeptical of climate alarmist views, with one even calling it "criminal" for skeptics to dispute the claims of alarmists. The new MSNBC host teased the show holding a plate of food he had prepared containing Alaskan salmon, summer sweet...

A German teenager dubbed the “anti-Greta” – climate sceptics’ answer to the schoolgirl activist Greta Thunberg – is set to address the biggest annual gathering of US grassroots conservatives. Naomi Seibt, 19, who styles herself as a “climate sceptic” or “climate realist”, will this week address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington, joining speakers including Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence. Seibt is in the pay of the Heartland Institute, a thinktank closely allied with the White House that denies established science showing humans are heating the planet with dangerous consequences. CPAC will be the biggest stage yet...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration just announced some spectacular news that should be banner headlines across the country: The price of natural gas has fallen to its lowest February level in 20 years. The data shows that natural gas prices fell to $1.77 per million British thermal units. In inflation-adjusted terms, the price of gas has plunged by some 80% since its high of $13.60 12 years ago. The price is down 90% since 2005, when prices hit nearly $20.

Counter-protesters tore down a barricade Wednesday in front of Canadian National (CN) railway tracks near Edmonton, Alberta, after environmental activists erected it. The activists who blocked the tracks are opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia. But the blockade was not up for long as another group soon had the barrier down and in the back of a truck. Environmentalists have brought railway traffic to a standstill now for two weeks across Canada, bringing the threat of food and fuel shortages closer every day. The activists behind the protest are claiming to represent the interests of the Wet’suwet’en...