Free Republic

<p>Animal rights activists claimed they were “sprayed with manure” by farmers when they protested at a flagship beef expo.</p><p>Activists from campaign group Animal Justice Project staged a protest at the National Beef Association’s (NBA) 2022 Expo, which took place at Darlington Farmers’ Auction Mart on Saturday 28 May.</p>

Environmentalists are threatening legal action in an attempt to halt the development of a new gasfield in the North Sea that has been given the green light by the UK government. Climate experts reacted with anger after the government announced it had given the Jackdaw field, to be developed by the oil multinational Shell, “final regulatory approval” on Wednesday. The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said: “Jackdaw gasfield – originally licensed in 1970 – has today received final regulatory approval. We’re turbocharging renewables and nuclear but we are also realistic about our energy needs now. Let’s source more of the gas...

Canceling the Grand Old Party (GOP) was the mission of last week's "Hard Truth" podcast, undertaken by your columnist, her partner, David Vance, and guest Jack Kerwick (introduced here). And on good grounds. The Republican Party has never stood up for you, will never stand up for you and is not going to do what it takes. Past is prologue. As Dr. Boyd Cathey has observed, the "party which never conserves anything" had been exposed as such as far back as 1875. "The great Southern author, Robert Lewis Dabney, writing a decade after the end of the War Between the...

An ongoing Department of Commerce investigation into whether China is circumventing tariffs on its solar energy products is slowing the expansion of solar power capacity in the U.S., according to industry and outside experts. “In the blink of an eye, we’re going to lose 100,000 American solar workers and any hope of reaching the president’s clean energy goals,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energies Industry Association (SEIA), said in a statement late last month. On March 25, James Maeder, the deputy assistant secretary of commerce for anti-dumping and countervailing duty operations, announced an investigation into whether...

As I’ve been pointing out now for a couple of years, the obvious gap in the plans of our betters for a carbon-free “net zero” energy future is the problem of massive-scale energy storage. How exactly is New York City (for example) going to provide its citizens with power for a long and dark full-week period in the winter, with calm winds, long nights, and overcast days, after everyone has been required to change over to electric heat and electric cars — and all the electricity is supposed to come from the wind and sun, which are neither blowing nor...

Echoing President Biden's comments, two European leaders at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, described the record gas prices as part of a "painful" period of "transition" to alternative energy that should not be resisted.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper intervened on Monday after one of President Biden’s top economic advisers sought to blame the record surge in gas prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. The exchange occurred after Tapper pressed White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese for answers on how long Americans will face surging gas prices. The national average for a gallon of gas hit a record $4.598 per gallon on Tuesday, according to AAA.

A geofence is a technology that makes use of location data to set up an invisible barrier in the real world. Often the technology uses GPS, but it can also use other data signals such as cellular, WiFi or RFID. You can't see or feel anything when you pass through a geofence, but if you are carrying a connected device, it will send out a signal that you have crossed the electronic boundary. This may trigger a programmed action - such as a message to appear on your phone, or in the case of Ford's internet-connected cars, impose a speed...

Biden admin drains another 40 million barrels of crude oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Last month, anti-automobile activists led by the Congress for the New Urbanism announced the formation of a national Freeway Fighters Network. The network opposes new freeways and freeway expansions and wants to shift freeway money to other forms of transportation. Among other things, they object to new freeway capacity because it induces more highway travel. Also, in late 2021 the Colorado Transportation Commission adopted a rule change intended to divert billions of future transportation dollars away from building and maintaining roads, essentially turning the Colorado Department of Transportation into a statewide urban planning agency focused on public transit, bicycle and...

Facebook and Instagram censored conservatives for their American energy independence statements even though fact-checkers disagreed on essential facts underlying the censored posts. Fact-checker Agence France-Presse (AFP) claimed the U.S. hadn’t been energy independent as part of an effort that censored the Media Research Center 27 times. Another approved fact-checker used the exact term “energy independence” that AFP employed to nit-pick the MRC. AFP censored 27 MRC posts combined on Facebook and Instagram between Feb. 28 and March 26. Those posts quoted high-profile figures, including former President Donald Trump, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and MRC President Brent...

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Six months after the world agreed in Glasgow to a U.N. climate pact with bold, new targets, political and business leaders facing an energy crisis, volatile markets and an economic downturn are grappling with how to cut carbon emissions. Amid soaring oil and gas prices triggered by Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, some countries have turned to other fuels, including coal, to meet their energy needs. Meanwhile, financial market ructions have complicated plans to raise the trillions of dollars needed for the energy transition away from fossil fuels. But for Amin Nasser, head of oil...

Oops! Old Joe said the quiet part out loud. Speaking to reporters in Japan on Monday, Joe Biden admitted that the current record gas crisis in America is ALL ON PURPOSE. On Monday the US saw its 12th straight day of record all-time high gas prices. We also learned this weekend that the Biden regime was not issuing ANY new drilling permits during this current crisis. They said it was a math error when they were confronted. Joe Biden: When it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that God willing when...

As states race to keep plants open, California becomes a test case of how much the tide has shifted Charles Komanoff was for decades an expert witness for groups working against nuclear plants, delivering blistering critiques so effective that he earned a spot at the podium when tens of thousands of protesters descended on Washington in 1979 over the Three Mile Island meltdown. Komanoff would go on to become an unrelenting adversary of Diablo Canyon, the hulking 37-year-old nuclear facility perched on a pristine stretch of California’s Central Coast that had been the focal point of anti-nuclear activism in America....

In the contest to be the most virtuous of all the states on the “carbon-free” electricity metric, the race is on between California and New York. In 2018 California enacted a bill going by the name “SB100,” which set a mandatory target of 60% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030 (and 100% by 2045). Not to be outdone, New York responded by enacting its “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act” in 2019, setting its own statutory targets of 70% of electricity from renewables by 2030 (and 100% by 2040). So is any of this real? Or is it just so...

Rare spiders and scorpions are being put at risk by a growing global trade driven by the demand for exotic pets, including species so rare that scientists were previously unaware of them, a team of international researchers has warned. They said that at least 70 per cent of spiders and scorpions being sold as pets, for medicine or food have been sourced from the wild. The researchers detected more than 1,200 species available for sale in a generally legal trade. The team said they are growing in popularity as "cool" pets that take up little space but warned that harvesting...

The world’s biggest fossil fuel firms are quietly planning scores of “carbon bomb” oil and gas projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global impacts, a Guardian investigation shows. The exclusive data shows these firms are in effect placing multibillion-dollar bets against humanity halting global heating. Their huge investments in new fossil fuel production could pay off only if countries fail to rapidly slash carbon emissions, which scientists say is vital. The oil and gas industry is extremely volatile but extraordinarily profitable, particularly when prices are high, as they are at present. ExxonMobil, Shell,...

In 1958, a combine carrying a full load of freshly harvested crops might weigh 8,800 pounds (4000 kg). Today, a fully loaded combine can clock in at 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg). The story of increasingly large farm vehicles isn't necessarily bad. The invention of these huge machines — along with advances like new fertilizers and genetically modified crops — mean that today's farmers can grow far more food than ever before. But there's reason to worry that equipment manufacturers have begun pushing the envelope too far. In a paper published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS, researchers show that farm...

A few days ago, I suggested that a climate change class action lawsuit should be filed against those parties that clamor to destroy the economy via a Green Agenda that seeks to ban fossil fuels. Some commenters raised an interesting point: How do you prove damages? I think it’s possible and would serve as a good basis for any legal complaint. The Green Agenda is supported in part or full by the following parties: federal, state, and local governments; universities; Green NGOs; foundations; corporations; renewable proponents/owners; and entrepreneurs. A court could determine if these entities are correct that anthropogenic climate...

There is a concerning precedent emerging within conventional American politics that mistakenly asserts a direct correlation between functional results and incremental regulation exists. Reality shows instead that regulation does not provide the strategic blueprint required to formulate long-term solutions and radical innovation. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission groundbreaking proposed climate change disclosure rule does not reflect that lesson and misses the mark. If passed, the 512-page proposal would mandate public companies to disclose an audited set of greenhouse gas emissions data from their direct operations, energy use, and value chain (i.e., Scope 1, 2, and 3, respectively). This proposal...