Free Republic

Climate-change scepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist Dubious on warmo peril? You're the kind who'd own slaves Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be "treated", according to an Oregon-based professor of "sociology and environmental studies". Professor Kari Norgaard compares the struggle against climate scepticism to that against racism and slavery in the US South. Prof Norgaard holds a B.S. in biology and a master's and PhD in sociology. "Over the past ten years I have published and taught in the areas of environmental sociology,...

Meredith Lowell of Cleveland Heights was arrested for allegedly soliciting a hitman to kill any adult who walked out of the local public library and was wearing fur, according to CBS News. Lowell allegedly included these details in an email to an undercover FBI agent who contacted her: "I am paying you $730 to kill one person wearing fur who is 12 or older - hopefully at least 14 years, however 12 years old or older is fine. I want them to be dead in under two minutes"

San Francisco philanthropist Susie Tompkins Buell, one of the Democratic Party's most generous benefactors, is keeping her checkbook closed when President Obama holds high-priced California fundraisers this week."I want to look him in the eye and say, 'Thank you so much' " for his work, said Buell, who expresses deep disappointment in the president's leadership on environmental issues, especially climate change. With Obama's 2012 re-election campaign in full swing, "I would just love to write my big check ... or have a high-dollar dinner here" on his behalf, she said. "I can't."Buell, a co-founder of the Esprit clothing company, has...

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=8642

A prime complaint against Rick Perry is that some have attributed to him that he doesn't support the building of a border fence. This is not true. Perry is for a more comprehensive border security system that includes strategic fencing, better surveillance, and "boots on the ground." If you have ever visited the border regions of Texas, you will agree with me that constructing a fence along the entire 1,200 mile border is not only horribly expensive, but very disruptive to the environment, private property, and the Rio Grande.

For environmental groups, it was the final hard slap that brought a long-troubled relationship to the brink. In late August, the State Department gave a crucial go-ahead on a controversial pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Then on Friday, leading into the holiday weekend, the Obama administration announced without warning that it was walking away from stricter ozone pollution standards that it had been promising for three years and instead sticking with Bush-era standards. John D. Walke, clean air director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group based in New York, likened...

Slowly but surely, an extraordinarily important new industry is slowly taking shape, with the potential to transform the global economy. After years of existing largely as an environmentalist's fantasy, commercial production of biofuels for the world civil aviation industry is slowly becoming a fact, with production starting up across three continents. The leading contenders for biofuel feedstocks are jatropha and camelina, both of which have their fervent supporters. While currently neither is capable of production at a price approaching that of Jet A1 civil aviation fuel derived from hydrocarbons, research and extensive investment are nevertheless investigating the possibilities. While little...

Tim DeChristopher, a University of Utah economics major student will be sentenced Tuesday, July 26 for fraudulantly bidding at a Bureau of Land Management Auction more than two years ago. DeChristopher is an environmental, climate change justice activist who posed as a bidder for leases for oil drilling in eastern Utah. He kept bidding and bidding, even though he did not have the cash or the intent to pay for the lease. His whole fraud activity upset the normal procedures of federal government business with the private sector. Those who side with him believe that he is a hero saving...

What started as a battle over fireworks shows led to a sweeping legal victory Friday for environmentalists that could stymie a wide range of events needing city permits, from the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon to birthday parties held at parks. “According to the strictest interpretation of this, jumpy-jumps and everything else would be subject to environmental review if this ruling stands,” said lawyer Robert Howard, who represented the La Jolla Community Fireworks Foundation in the case. “It’s a breathtaking ruling.” Superior Court Judge Linda Quinn said La Jolla’s annual Fourth of July fireworks show requires evaluation under the California Environmental...

The head of the EPA Lisa Jackson spoke this weekend to the attendees of the global warming conference Power Shift 2011. During her remarks, which can be viewed in full here, she took time to address what she called “environmental justice”. She says the EPA’s new focus on “environmental justice” is one of the things she is most proud of.

The National Marine Fisheries Service says Navy training off the San Diego County coast has been linked to the deaths of at least three dolphins and may be responsible for two more. . . . Environmentalists have called on the Navy to suspend activities involved in the deaths and conduct a transparent investigation. A spokesman says the Navy is continuing its training program in the area.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A convicted arsonist and sex offender has been charged in federal court with sending an e-mail in which he allegedly threatened to kill a U.S. Senator if she didn't oppose legislation that would end environmental protections for wolves, court records show. Tras Gustav Karlsson Berg, 35, who recently moved from San Anselmo to Oakland, sent an e-mail to the California senator on Feb. 24 entitled, "Oppose the Anti-Wolf Continuing Resolution," according to a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Berg wrote, "I'm going to shoot you with a high-powered rifle and bomb your...

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah man who infiltrated a sale of federal energy leases in December 2008 to protest U.S. policies about climate change was found guilty by a jury Thursday of disrupting a government auction and faces up to 10 years in prison. The defendant, Tim DeChristopher, 29, became a folk hero to some in the environmentalist movement for taking action against the leases, which provoked protests and demonstrations in the closing days of the administration of President George W. Bush because of the perceived risk to sensitive lands in southern Utah. In his four-day trial in federal...

Environmentalists have a new role model--Genghis Khan. According to this report in England's Daily Mail , Khan was a real greenie whose actions during his long career ultimately improved the atmosphere and reforested the land. But...but...some might sputter, he was an incredibly cruel, murdering invader--not an environmentalist! Uh, well yes on all counts; that's how he improved the environment. Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history - after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest.The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th...

Those widely heralded compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) turn out to be a bit of dud in the real world. For years, we have seen traditional light bulbs vanishing from shelves of hardware stores and Home Depots across America.  They have been replaced by those screw-shaped things that bespeak the future -- a future of dull lights, money flowing overseas, Americans jobs being terminated, and promised energy savings going up in smoke. From the Wall Street Journal: California's utilities are spending $548 million over seven years to subsidize consumer purchases of compact fluorescent lamps. But the benefits are turning out...

This week the American Petroleum Institute (API) hosted a conference on “The State of American Energy� in Washington, which I attended. In it, API president Jack Gerard set forth some rather startling figures which speak to the future of the energy industry in the United States and how government policy will impact the effect this critical sector of our economy will have on jobs and the deficit – two areas of immense concern to the majority of Americans. (The full text of the address is available here.)First, Gerard recapped some of the highlights from the previous year. In 2010, oil...

The recent global environmentalist conference in Cancun, Mexico discussed how to lower global CO2 emissions to fight global warming. But the "solutions" often lead to more problems.

The North American Animal Liberation press office says Briana Waters was released from prison Saturday. The 34-year-old Waters was connected to a cell of radical environmentalists based in Olympia and in Oregon who carried out attacks throughout the West from 1996-2001, causing more than $80 million in damage. Last month, an appeals court overturned Water's conviction of being guilty of helping an ecoterror attack that destroyed a University of Washington research center, concluding the judge made mistakes that cast doubt on the fairness of her trial.

The suspect entered the building around 1 p.m. local time waving a handgun, and with metal canisters strapped to the front and back of his vest, according to witnesses. All violated a court order to stay away. See, laws will protect us while police hunker down outside like they did at Columbine. Gun control? How about BOMB control laws... Lee issued 11 demands to "save the planet" by stopping people from having babies, or, as he put it "more filthy human children." All Discovery programs...The suspect entered the building around 1 p.m. local time waving a handgun, and with metal...

Here is link to live stream: http://interactive.foxnews.com/livestream/live.html?chanId=4

Called "arguably the greatest American in the 20th century," during his 95 years Norman Borlaug probably saved more lives than any other person. He is one of just six people to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And yet Dr. Borlaug, who died this past September, is scarcely known in his own country. Born in Iowa in 1914, Borlaug spent most of his life in impoverished nations inventing, improving and teaching the "Green Revolution." His idea was simple: Make developing countries self sufficient in food by teaching them how to use...

It is the fact that the letters “Ph.D.” follow my name. It is my degrees in chemistry and a decade of work in environmental remediation that draw people’s dreamy adoration. I am held to a higher standard not just because I’m a pastor but mostly because I am a scientist. Folks assume that I know the answer to any question they might think up. With our increased demand and consumption of oil, with our increased demand for money and the greed that pervades our culture, and with the expectation of instant results born of the very technology that scientists and...

Auto-industry bigwigs these days are either on government welfare (GM’s Whitacre, Chrysler’s Marchionne) or are former green activists (Ford’s Bill Ford). But outside the boardroom, industry experts fear Washington green mandates foisted on them by pols who wouldn’t know a connecting rod from a valve stem. In a business world where Big Auto and Big Government are increasingly indistinguishable, however, few can speak out. An exception is longtime Detroit insider Peter De Lorenzo. As electric-carmaker Tesla’s stock plummeted this week after its government-financed IPO, he unloaded on his blog: The suspension of all rational thought in defense of a Green...

For much of the past year, Current TV has been quietly undergoing an overhaul that will change just about everything but the struggling channel's name. Current declined comment for this story. It's a revitalization project Gore & Co. embarked on after exhausting a more lucrative possibility: selling the channel. Current's founding partner, Joel Hyatt, spent much of 2009 shopping the network with a price tag that wildly overestimated the company's worth, confirmed sources at several media firms. Current even had extensive sale talks as far back as 2007 with Google, where Gore serves as a senior advisor. Now the focus...

Perhaps you've heard of the Smart Grid initiative. Perhaps you understand that the goal of the initiative is to improve and modernize the nation's power transmission and distribution networks. Maybe your electric utility has even installed a Smart Meter at your home or business. What you probably don't know is that the Smart Grid movement is the Trojan Horse of the green agenda, a step toward Cap & Trade. Since the time of grid pioneer Samuel Insull, the goal of utilities everywhere has been to balance generation capacity against electrical demand to ensure system integrity. Curiously, this goal is shared in...

Prince Charles yesterday urged the world to follow Islamic 'spiritual principles' in order to protect the environment. In an hour-long speech, the heir to the throne argued that man's destruction of the world was contrary to the scriptures of all religions - but particularly those of Islam. He said the current 'division' between man and nature had been caused not just by industrialisation, but also by our attitude to the environment - which goes against the grain of 'sacred traditions'.

Very little has been written about the Bakken Formation and the rich oil reservoir just beneath it in western North Dakota. This recently discovered oil depository potentially holds 1.9 billion barrels in the Three Forks-Sanish formation. For years, the oil industry have known about this oil field, but it was too costly to explore and the technology was not yet available. That is all changing now. The question is whether the EPA, environmentalists and our oppressive government will allow the exploration and harvesting of this tremendous resource that would greatly aid the US in their need for cheap, accessible energy...

Dear___________: Since 2005, Walmart has been committed to achieving three broad sustainability goals — to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain people and the environment. We are now ready to announce another major step as we broaden and accelerate Walmart's efforts to become a more sustainable company. Please join us for a live webcast on Thursday, Feb. 25 from 11 a.m. to noon (CST) for this announcement by Walmart President and CEO Mike Duke, along with remarks by Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp. Please visit WalmartCommunity.com to sign-up...

There has been no more reliable cheerleader for President Obama’s energy and climate change policies than Daniel J. Weiss of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. But Mr. Obama’s recent enthusiasm for nuclear power, including his budget proposal to triple federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors to $54 billion, was too much for Mr. Weiss. The president’s embrace of nuclear power was disappointing, and the wrong way to go about winning Republican votes, he said, adding that Mr. Obama should not be endorsing such a costly and potentially catastrophic energy alternative “as bait just to get talks started with...

A state assemblyman who represents Toyota's North American headquarters in Torrance is so peeved by the automaker's safety problems and its recent decision to close a California plant that he's asking his colleagues to stop buying the Japanese-made hybrid cars. Assembly Rules Committee Chairman Ted Lieu, who is running in June to be the Democratic Party's candidate for attorney general, said he plans to ask the committee on Thursday to reinstitute a "Buy-American" policy when purchasing pool vehicles that the house's 80 members use to get around Sacramento. ... "With the massive safety problems that Toyota is experiencing, I think...

According to a criminal complaint, 41-year -old Stephen Louis Olson of Backus was angry the county planned to log the trees. Cass County officials say the stand is thinned every ten to 15 years. About 100 of the 600 trees were slated to be cut down and sold this month. The money would have benefitted the community and school district. - Authorities say the entire forest must be cut down due to safety concerns. Mike Diekmann of the Cass County Sheriff's Office says that if a saw hit one of the nails, "it would explode like a gun going off"...

Is Meg Whitman too green for the conservative core of the Republican Party? Wednesday the San Jose Mercury News released the news that eMeg has offered $200,000 to the Environmental Defense Fund from her charitable foundation, $100,000 more than what was first thought. Then there is Steve Poizner’s Charitable Foundation accounting numbers. While all of the attention is on Meg’s gifts to environmental causes, nobody has asked the obvious question: “Why does Steve Poizner’s charitable foundation only have $7,000 as its balance?” How can a millionaire have such a small amount of cash in his (and his wife’s) charitable foundation?...

A Canadian study shows that people who buy green products tend to lie and steal more than those who don't: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Toronto, October 6, 2009 -Those lyin', cheatin' green consumers. Just being around green products can make us behave more altruistically, a new study to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found. But buying those same products can have the opposite effect. Researchers found that buying green can lead people into less altruistic behaviour, and even make them more likely to steal and lie than after buying conventional products. Buying products that claim to be made...

I want to know how the situation covered on Hannity today is not cause enough for armed insurrection by the people of California against the tyranny of Washington DC. I want to know how governor Schwarzenegger has not called out the national guard and by force of arms turned the water on. I want to know how any rational human being can look at the starving of an area, the destroyed landscape, the human misery caused by artificially starving an area of a natural resource and defend it. I want to know if our government would accept such actions committed...

EPA will also pursue a ban on the manufacture and distribution of lead tire weights in response to a 2009 petition from the Ecology Center, the Sierra Club and other NGOs requesting that the agency establish regulations prohibiting the manufacture, processing, and distribution of lead tire weights.

San Joaquin Valley farms are laying off workers and letting fields lie fallow as their water ration falls. Reporting from Mendota, Calif. -- Water built the semi-arid San Joaquin Valley into an agricultural powerhouse. Drought and irrigation battles now threaten to turn huge swaths of it into a dust bowl. Farmers have idled half a million acres of once-productive ground and are laying off legions of farmhands. That's sending joblessness soaring in a region already plagued by chronic poverty. [snip] This year has been even drier after a federal court ordered that pumps moving water through the system be turned...

OK, this is clearly a vanity post and not that earth-shattering, but I thought I would share it in light of the recent cap-and-trade news. We are currently in the process of buying a home from some liberal Obama devotees. We don't know them at all, but it is abundantly clear from their bumper stickers, buttons, Obama inaugural pens, books etc. Anyway, in the home inspection process of the negotiations, we discovered that the home has high levels of radon which need to be mitigated. The sellers refuse to pay for this correction which would be, roughly, $900. Now this...

Is the right responsible for inspiring murder, such as that of late-term abortionist George Tiller by Kansas native Scott Roeder?  Some certainly seem to think so.  For instance, the Friday before last Bill O'Reilly had as a guest on his show Joan Walsh, the editor of leftist news site Salon.com.  She appeared because she had criticized O'Reilly for engaging in what she called a "jihad" against Tiller.  Her thesis is that O'Reilly and, presumably, the rest of us who are passionately pro-life are culpable Tiller's death. Of course, this isn't a novel idea among the left.  If there is any...

The Green Left must be thrilled with the new Obama/Pelosi/Reid (OPR) troika in charge of the federal government. Three times already, the troika has blocked the development of domestic oil resources. During his first week in office, President Obama rescinded his predecessor's executive order permitting drilling on the continental shelf and in the Green River Formation. Both areas contain abundant oil-especially Green River (under Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah), which has recoverable shale-oil reserves three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Several weeks later, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar unilaterally canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah, on...

For me, purchasing shrimp is a moral dilemma. I have to have conversations with a pantheon of deities in order to just put a package of shrimp in my shopping cart. Why would something as simple and tummy-rubbing as shrimp do this to my already fragile psyche? Because the methods used to get it to my grocer’s seafood case are environmentally detrimental. Both wild-caught shrimp and farm-raised pose problems that just make me squirm. When I was younger I was Mr. Environmentalist. My school reports were always about natural power sources (that was before it was called “alternative energy” or...

A state law prevents new nuclear power plants from being built in Minnesota, and some say that means nuclear can't even be part of a discussion about the state's future energy needs. An effort to change that suffered a setback Thursday, when members of a House energy committee voted down a bill that would lift the ban. The 9-12 vote came after two days of hearings in which lawmakers heard testimony from more than two dozen people, including national experts, environmentalists, the nuclear industry and people who live near Minnesota's two existing nuclear plants. While the measure still could be...

JERUSALEM (Map, News) - An American demonstrator was critically wounded Friday in a clash between protesters and Israeli troops over Israel's West Bank separation barrier. Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif., area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt. "He's in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests," said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson's condition...

Don’t Drink the Water by: Heather Latham, February 25, 2009 Is your bottled water unsafe? Are you just as well off drinking tap water as bottled water? According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the answer to these questions may be yes. In 1999, the NRDC did a study “of more than 1000 bottles of 103 types of bottled water from many parts of the country.” The study was done on bottled water from California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas. They found that “according to government and industry estimates, about one fourth of bottled...

While everyone is distracted with the Pelosi Reid Obama artery–choking, cardiac arrest, Pork Barrel Spending Bill, congress is sneaking-ly trying to pass the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. Left-wing environmentalists are behind this bill to purposely undercut current progress toward affordable domestic energy. Essentially they will be stealing 300 million barrels of proven oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from any future use.

Environmental activist Lloyd Carter resigned from the California Water Impact Network late Monday afternoon -- after more than 100 people showed up outside Fresno City Hall to rally against his comments last week that disparaged farm workers.

From the school of thought that brought us such blockbuster idiocies as "No DDT Means Malaria" and "Blood For Owl: Move It Lumber" comes a new thriller with all the intrigue that only moronic environmentalists can evoke.Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the salty tale of "Pass The Salt - The Puget Sound Chronicles."Floyd and Mary Beth Brown at Townhall.com tell the story: Snow and ice cause an increase in car crashes. Car tires have little or no traction on these surfaces. We learn these basic facts in Driver's Ed 101. However, officials in Seattle, Wash. disregard these physics laws...

Green With Envy: Prius Owners Smile as Neighbors Fume Monday , August 25, 2008 By Meg Shannon Every morning, as Lynn Schmidt walks out of her Long Island, N.Y., home, opens the door to her baby-blue Prius, waves to her grumbling neighbor and pulls out of the driveway, she has every reason to smile. It's not just the 45 miles per gallon her gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle is getting. And it's not only that she can go three weeks without a fill-up. It's also because that through her choice of automobile, Lynn is doing what she considers her share of being...

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer. Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken...

Recent crises have reenergized the population control movement. Worried about food shortages? Reduce the number of babies born, its advocates argue. Concerned about global warming? Contracept or sterilize more women. Want to bring down gas prices? Promote abortion around the globe. As "Going Green" columnist Bryan Walsh puts it in the latest issue of Time magazine (June 2, 2008), "Population is the essential multiplier for any number of human ills." Not so long ago, the population controllers would have been embarrassed to openly promote such ideas. After all, they have cried wolf so many times that most sensible people have...

Ojai, California has an environmental activist that might be too liberal for even this liberal-leaning city of 8,000. Ojai is the home of Jennifer Moss, “The Pastie Lady”. Clad only in a G-string and flower shaped pasties, Moss pedals her bicycle around Ojai in her attention-grabbing get-up and campaigns for what she considers good causes. Jennifer might be labeled an “environmental exhibitionist”. In the year that “social artist” Moss has been “performing” for the environment, on Ojai’s main drag, she’s been arrested twice–and repeatedly ticketed for obstructing traffic. Irate parents have asked the City Council to force Moss to put...