Free Republic

The putative climate “debate” that has been raging for the last thirty years or so has now reached the point of duncical irrationality. (I put “debate” in scare quotes since what we are observing is not so much a debate as an ideological crusade that brooks no resistance; in effect, a political jihad against those who oppose the Warmist orthodoxy.) The upcoming Paris COP (climate treaty conference) slated for December of this year, which Obama is expected to ratify, renders the situation increasingly urgent. The world’s leading politicians, abetted by the dubious claims of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...

Modern industrial society commenced with the use of coal and oil to power factories, trains, ships, and agriculture and to generate electricity. With abundant energy, prosperity increased, and people could save enough to support leisure, education, culture, and environmental concerns.

 But the dark greens have a dream to dismantle all this, and return society to the hunter/gatherer era.

 In an unguarded moment, Maurice Strong, a leader of the international green movement, said:

 Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?

Earlier this month I attended climate change lectures at the University of Chicago and Wheaton College. Local sourcing was touted as a solution to environmental ills. At Wheaton, a visiting professor from Scotland proposed that global warming could be stopped if people sourced food, energy, and other life essentials locally. He failed to offer advice on the sustainability of airplane flights from Scotland to Chicago.

All the talk about saving the Earth should have been focused on action to lift a billion people out of poverty. But, as the saying goes, talk is cheap. And caring for the planet’s poor is expensive, and hard, especially in terms of getting the world’s ruling class to even budge on their arrogant leftist ideology that aids in the impoverishment of the masses.

arth Day was declared in 1970 and for the past 45 years we have all been living in the Environmental Insane Asylum, being told over and over again to believe things that are the equivalent of Green hallucinations. Now the entire month of April has been declared Earth Month, but in truth not a day goes by when we are not assailed with the bold-faced lies that comprise environmentalism. Around the globe, the worst part of this is that we are being victimized by people we are told to respect from the President of the United States to the Pope...

Washington Post music critic Chris Richards wrote up Saturday’s Earth Day festivities on the national Mall on the front of Monday’s Style section. The headline was “At Earth Day rally, it was the message that needed saving.” Richards liked the music, but didn’t like the talking. For example: “The event’s hosts, newscaster Soledad O’Brien and Black Eyed Peas bandleader Will.I.Am, appeared to have a rough time of it. O’Brien, either frustrated by glitchy teleprompters or perhaps not clear on how a concert works, actually shushed the crowd at one point.”

More than five years after President Obama and other leaders agreed on a 2020 goal of raising $100 billion each year from public and private sources to help developing countries deal with climate change, the United Nations wants to see action. Ahead of Earth Day on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is pointing to a meeting next month in New York where he says he will be looking for clear indications from governments and investors as to how the ambitious goal will be reached.

A disturbing story flagged by The Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay out of West Virginia indicates that a man, enraged by the drilling taking place in his state, shot an employee of an energy exploitation company on Monday.

Geo-engineering has become a buzzword again, thanks to a recent two-volume report of the US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council [NAS-NRC 2015; http://bit.ly/EOSNRC]. Driven by exaggerated concerns about greenhouse (GH) warming catastrophes, the reports pursued mainly two project ideas:

A worldwide switch to a “more European” work schedule, which includes working fewer hours and more vacation time, could prevent as much as half of the expected global temperature rise by 2100, according to the analysis, which used a 2012 study that found shorter work hours could be associated with lower carbon emissions.

There is so much at stake for the charlatans that have foisted the failed “global warming” hoax, followed by the equally dubious claims and predictions regarding “climate change”, that it should come as no surprise that they have begun to wage a propaganda war on the courageous scientists who led the struggle to educate the public about the truth and the organizations who supported their efforts. Along the way, many groups and publications claiming scientific credentials abandoned those standards to pump out global warming and climate change propaganda. Scientists discovered they could secure grant money for “research” so long as...

The climate scare parroted by bed-wetting eco-freako useful idiots worldwide began when the pseudo-scientific profiteers of doom on U.N.’s fraudulent and corrupt climate panel, the IPCC (known universally in diplomatic circles as IPeCaC after the well-known emetic) predicted with “substantial confidence” 25 years ago that its useless but gratifyingly expensive climate models had captured the essential features of the climate.

Imagine you wanted to get in your electric car and drive a considerable distance. It wouldn’t take long for your car to run out of power, so you would have to have another car, one using gasoline, to drive behind you to make sure you reached your destination. That’s a description of “renewable energy”, wind and solar, in America today because they both require backup from traditional energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. And “renewable energy” based on “free” sun and wind power costs more to produce and purchase. Need it be said that the sun...

Here is Dana Milbank of WaPo celebrating the “retreat” of climate change deniers: “There is no denying it: Climate-change deniers are in retreat.” He concludes his op-ed by noting “that corporations are becoming reluctant to bankroll crazy theories,” and “the surrender of climate-change deniers will follow.” For Milbank, this marks the historic turning point marking the collapse of flat-Earth science “crazies.”

President Barack Obama will ask Americans to think of climate change as a threat not just to the environment, but also to their health. Obama on Tuesday was to announce a series of steps that private entities like Google and Microsoft are taking to better prepare the nation's health systems for the inevitable effects of a warmer, more erratic climate. He was to be joined at Howard University Medical School by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy.

Environmental activist and billionaire Tom Steyer served notice on Monday that he will use his wealth to try to bring climate change into the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, vowing to target Republican hopefuls who deny the connection between burning fossil fuels and rising global temperatures. Steyer’s NextGen Climate political action committee launched what it calls the Hot Seat campaign aimed at calling out Republican candidates for taking money from the billionaire Koch brothers. The group will target Senator Rand Paul, who is expected to launch his presidential campaign on Tuesday.

The potential loss of the EPA in their anti-fracking campaign probably has environmentalists scrambling to rehash their stance on the well-stimulation process. Too bad for them they’ve already made some pretty ridiculous claims about fracking. The Daily Caller News Foundation has taken the liberty of listing the top five most ridiculous anti-fracking claims here:

ABC anchor Martha Raddatz pressured Brown on criticisms that the new requirements he placed on California’s agricultural industry, which uses a reported 80% of the state’s water, were soft. To put this into perspective, Raddatz reported that more water is being used for almond production than by the combined businesses and homes of Los Angeles and San Francisco. “They’re not watering their lawn or taking long showers,” Brown said in response. “They’re providing most of the fruits and vegetables of America to a significant part of the world.”

Earth Day’s 45th anniversary could be the most exciting year in environmental history. The year in which economic growth and sustainability join hands. It’s our turn to lead. So our world leaders can follow by example.

Need another indicator of climate warming in Antarctica? The trio of weather bloggers at Weather Underground report the temperature there likely hit a record-breaking 63.5F (17.5C) Tuesday. The balmy reading was logged at Argentina’s Esperanza Base, which lies on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.