Free Republic

A Ketchikan jury correctly convicted a Greenpeace ship's captain of criminal negligence for sailing in Alaska waters without the proper oil spill response plan, the state appeals court ruled Thursday. The opinion partly cancels a 2005 decision by a Ketchikan judge to overturn guilty verdicts against Greenpeace Inc. and Arctic Sunrise Capt. Arne Sorensen of misdemeanor charges. At the time of its anti-logging campaign, the ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of "petroleum products," according to district court documents. In Alaska, non-tank vessels larger than 400 gross tons must file an oil spill response plan application five days before...

First, it was cow gas that was wrecking the environment. Then gas-powered lawnmowers. Now, it’s fireworks we’re supposed to worry about. Fireworks, it was reported this week, are helping ruin both the Earth and our health. Where most of us looked up at the sky last night and saw red, white and blue, some people, it seems, saw only the first. Fireworks, some scientists are warning, are toxic, and you know what’s next. All those “ooohhhhhhhs” and “aaahhhhhhhhhhs” will soon be “booooos” and “baaaaaaaaahs.” Except that people, many people, have had enough of “Enough.”“No matter what you do, something is...

Due to pending disasters predicted because of global warming, government scientists are urging the creation of a new Earth Systems Science Agency -- by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey... 'The United States faces unprecedented environmental and economic challenges in the decades ahead,' the group warns. 'Foremost among them will be climate change, sea-level rise, altered weather patterns, declines in freshwater availability and quality and loss of biodiversity'... Developing...

To their everlasting horror, the global-warming alarmists have discovered that ExxonMobil advertises with the Washington Nationals. This act of free enterprise cannot go unpunished, so the global-warming alarmists have initiated a campaign to educate the Lerner family and baseball-supporting public in the hope the Nationals will end their relationship with ExxonMobil. It is unclear whether the global-warming alarmists walked to the ballpark from their homes, took mass transportation or drove there in an automobile. That, of course, is often the rub with the global-warming zealots. They talk a good game if it concerns you, your neighbor and the person down...

Take a wild guess Only 2 percent of the nation's electricity comes from so-called "renewable" sources -- wind turbines, solar panels and geothermal plants. Environmentalists dream of taking that number up to 100 percent, making all of America's utilities carbon-free. Getting even a tenth of the way toward that goal will require an awful lot of time and money. For one thing, getting that "green" electricity from the remote, open areas where the wind blows, the sun shines and the land is cheap to the urban areas that consume most of the nation's power will take thousands of miles of...

It's another case of liberals who cannot get want they want via the legislative process trying to get judges to write it for them from the bench. To show you how out-there the enviro-lefties are on this, Chertoff used waivers authorized by Congress. You don't have to like them, but neither did the members of Congress who voted "no" on the legislation. BUT THEY LOST. You don't get to rewrite the damn law through the judiciary. People elected by Americans in the democratic process passed that legislation as the law of the land. You don't like it? Vote for some...

Environmentalists have contended for decades that if gasoline, heating oil and natural-gas prices rose high enough, Americans would clamor for energy alternatives. Well, each fuel sets a record almost daily, and Americans are clamoring — for more gasoline, heating oil and natural gas. A new Rasmussen poll finds two-thirds of Americans favor more offshore drilling, as opposed to just 18 percent who oppose it. Drilling is backed by 57 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of unaffiliated voters. Even liberals think environmental concerns must take a backseat to more plentiful, less expensive fossil fuels, 46 percent to 37 percent. Last...

The Sierra Club, one of the nation's largest and most politically-active environmental organizations, announced this evening it would endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president. The announcement was not a surprise: the group's executive director, Carl Pope, had hammered the presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for months over his missed votes in the Senate and his support for nuclear power subsidies as a way to address global warming. This week Pope criticized McCain for announcing he supports lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling. Tomorrow, Pope will speak at an event in Cleveland, Ohio with Leo Gerard,...

Dems Running on Empty by Sen. James Inhofe What a difference three years makes: In 2005, I led the charge against a massive global warming cap-and-trade bill. It was a lonely battle with few GOP members willing to join me on the Senate floor to publicly oppose it. Fast forward to June 2008: Not only was I joined by dozens of GOP Senators, but nearly 30% of the Democratic Senators rebelled against their leadership and opposed the Boxer Climate Tax Bill. In the end, Senator Boxer only had at most 35 Democratic Senators willing to vote for final passage on...

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- It seems like an idea any environmentalist would embrace: Build one of the world's largest solar power operations in the Southern California desert and surround it with plants that run on wind and underground heat. Yet San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and its potential partners face fierce opposition because the plan also calls for a 150-mile, high-voltage transmission line that would cut through pristine parkland to reach the nation's eighth-largest city. The showdown over how to get renewable energy to consumers will likely play out elsewhere around the country as well, as state regulators require...

RRFM.org Commentary We all remember stories about the Teflon Don (John Gotti). But when it comes to the ever-growing cost of gasoline, the new phrase in the political world should be the Teflon Dems. Let there be no mistake. A vast majority of those within the Democratic Party see no downside to the fact the price of oil seems to reach a new high every day. In fact, the more Americans pay for a gallon of gasoline, the bigger the smile on the faces of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. As long as George Bush is in the...

Greens Thwart Gasoline Production By Steven Milloy Four-plus-dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to realize that we need increased domestic oil production to meet our ever-growing demand for affordable fuel. But even if the greens lose the political battle over drilling offshore and in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they nevertheless are way ahead of the game as they implement a back-up plan to make sure that not a drop of that oil ever eases our gasoline crunch. The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, successfully pressured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to block ConocoPhillips’...

"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do those things to other people and I require the same of them."—John Wayne, The Shootist. A tenacious group of patriotic ranchers way out West has just won a major victory for property owners nationwide. In Hage v United States, a Claims Court ruled that the federal government may not use environmentalist regulations and bullying tactics to refuse citizens use of their own land without providing them with just compensation. And it’s a story as inspiring as it is instructive. The Hage...

Who are the real environmentalists — liberals or conservatives? By Christopher Cook The first news item I saw this morning was from FOX News:Feds: Caribbean Monk Seal Officially Extinct HONOLULU — Federal officials have confirmed what biologists have long thought: The Caribbean monk seal has gone the way of the dodo. Humans hunting the docile creatures for research, food and blubber left the population unsustainable, say biologists who warn that Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals could be the next to go. The last confirmed sighting of a Caribbean monk seal was in 1952 between Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The...

Discussing fuel prices and what it means for the troubled auto industry, with Mike Jackson, Autonation CEO

WASHINGTON - The Senate has rejected a Republican energy plan that calls for opening an Alaska wildlife refuge and some offshore waters to oil development. Supporters of the measure couldn't get the needed 60 votes to overcome a Democratic-led filibuster threat. Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said more domestic oil production is needed to keep prices in check and to reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports. Opponents said areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and coastal waters that have been off limits to drilling for 25 years ought to remain that out of bounds to oil companies....

"May we live long and die out" is the unofficial motto of a new movement that seeks to improve the Earth's ecosystem by ensuring that the human species does not survive. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT, consists of volunteers who have made active life decisions to remain childless for the benefit of the Earth, thereby preventing the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals. While no one person takes credit for being the founder, Les U. Knight created its name and is the spokesperson for the movement. "We've already exceeded Earth's carrying capacity for humans by...

RUSH: Snerdley says we have a lot of people calling about oil today. I'm getting e-mails about this, too, and there obviously is some kind of campaign out there to have oil discussed. You know, the story out there past couple of days is "experts" say that the barrel price of oil will soon hit $200 -- and this is roiling the markets, they say. Now, I want you to stop and think about something, folks. If $200-a-barrel oil leads to the pump price of $10 a gallon at the gasoline pump, let me just ask you a simple question....

Students at a California public school have written a series of letters to Chicago's Heartland Institute, which works to discover and develop free-market solutions to society's problems, attacking its members for "destroying our planet" by refusing to endorse the politics of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" film. According to students in the sixth-grade class of teacher Michael Steria at David A. Brown Middle School, the institute consists of "fools" and "horrible people." "I think your (sic) fools for denying G.W. you know it could kill us all & you're just adding to it. I want you to help stop G.W....

OSLO – Greenpeace and more than 100 other environmental groups denounced projects for burying industrial greenhouse gases on Monday, exposing splits in the green movement about whether such schemes can slow global warming. Many governments and some environmental organisations such as the WWF want companies to capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the exhausts of power plants and factories and then entomb them in porous rocks as one way to curb climate change. But Greenpeace issued a 44-page report about the technology entitled 'False Hope'. 'Carbon capture and storage is a scam. It is the ultimate coal industry pipe dream,' said...

Open Letter To Environmentalists Thank you for your dedication to protecting our environment. Clean air and clean water are essential to preserving life on planet Earth. Protecting all species and natural lands and forests are admirable priorities. Recycling and a green lifestyle are wonderful. Making the environment the most important thing in your life is a good thing, not a problem. I support you. But we do have a problem. You have vigorously embraced the Global Warming predictions of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and are using the warning of uncontrollable warming and a resulting environmental calamity...

[An oldie-but-goodie appropriate for Earth Day.] April 22, 2005 -- Today is a religious holiday that should make us all into atheists. April 22, 2005, marks the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. For many people it's simply a day to think warm and fuzzy thoughts about clean air, crystal lakes, verdant forests and soaring eagles. Until the 1990s May Day marked the worship by the communists of an abstraction called the "workers" at the expense of real flesh-and-blood workers and every other human being on the planet. The result was human carnage. Now Earth Day marks the worship by eco-extremists...

These days, more Americans not only want to live well, but want to also do good (or at least do no evil). They still love money and conspicuous displays of affluence. But now, the way to achieve status is to trade in the Beemer for a Toyota Prius, spend $50,000 putting solar panels on the roof, shop at Whole Foods for $7-a-bunch organic endive, and acquire a chic new wardrobe fashioned entirely of hemp, soy fiber, and recycled tires, Failla says.

There is revolution going on in waste management, which Big Brother would be proud of. Tucked away under the rim of wheelie bins found in two Sydney councils are small radio frequency tracking devices collecting information on a household's waste habits. Randwick Mayor Bruce Notley-Smith told The World Today they are the way of the future. "We will be able to find out the weights of the various bins and collect the data, the entire amount, as opposed to the quantity that is recyclable," he said. The garbage truck reads the data on the bin, weighs the bin, and the...

A group of environmental activists has enlisted Google to help flood the congressional switchboard with one million phone calls on Earth Day urging lawmakers to enact eco-friendly measures. "We're really excited about this because Congress keeps saying they don't hear from the American public on climate change," said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, which bills itself as an eco-activism group connecting some 17,000 organizations in 174 countries. "The [presidential] candidates are not being asked about climate change. Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity that we've ever faced." Rogers said her group is finalizing talks with Internet...

Plots by Communists to infiltrate America. The disintegration of borders and rural areas. Citizens mobilizing and rising up against government agencies and big business. It all sounds like the plot for a summer blockbuster, but it's something that could be happening in your own backyard. These were just a few of the topics addressed in the "How to fight the TTC" workshop, held Monday at the Pitser Garrison Civic Center in Lufkin. The conference served as an informational meeting aimed at informing citizens and local government officials how they can unite in trying to stop the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor project....

Beyond the lack of real scientific interest and the vilification of all who dare to examine facts, beyond the careless rhetoric of David Suzuki, other “scientists” and their supporters, the environmental movement is doing irreparable damage to itself and to its cause. That’s what happens when environmentalists mandate the replacement of Edison’s incandescent light bulb with a tiresome contraption that if broken releases a toxic amount of mercury in your home. And that’s leaving out the fact that prolonged exposure to fluorescent light bulbs have in some cases been shown to affect the nervous system (I’d joke that this may...

Here’s your “Al Gore Global Warming Question of the Day:” Is it time to panic? If you’re a Cambridge Greenie who’s just broken one of your environmentally friendly compact fluorescent bulbs in the kids’ playroom - absolutely. If you’re a rational person who can actually read a thermometer - not so much. I fall into the second category, which is why I don’t spend $10 on mediocre, mercury-filled deathsticks known as CFLs. A recent front-page story in USA Today pointed out that these “spaghetti bulbs” as they’re sometimes known, give off lousy, unflattering light; don’t work with dimmer or three-way...

Over the past year, a remarkable cooling trend has brought ocean surface temperatures down to temperatures reached in the 1940s. Now, land temperatures have followed. Planet-wide land temperatures were actually significantly *below* the 20th-century average. This is not a refutation of global warming by an attempt to debate how sound the alarmists' dataset is. This is based on the same data sets used by Al Gore, Dr. Hansen, and the IPCC: Global Warming is, for now, history. Global temperatures are about the coolest measured since 1994, about the same as the phenomenally large "La Nina" of 2000. By 1994, climatologists...

Ethanol Mandates Could Drive Up Food Prices, Enviros Say By Monisha Bansal February 04, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - Environmental groups are backing away from federal biofuel and ethanol mandates. While renewable fuel sources may reduce greenhouse gas emissions they also could raise food costs and cause shortages, critics say. "We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history," Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, said in a statement. "The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale...

There's nothing wrong with a group of people historically at odds sitting down to find common ground. Or is there? For decades, our public lands have been a battleground: Timber, wildlife, recreation, wilderness -- which interests and uses should dominate? But now, "collaboration" is all the rage. In collaboration, diverse stakeholders (as they invariably tag themselves) -- environmentalists, developers, off-roaders, timber companies, county officials -- hash out an agreement on how to manage their local public lands and then submit it to Congress for approval. A few deals already have been enacted, and another half a dozen are in the...

aving climate campaigner Al Gore round to your house is to open yourself to a self-flagellating guilt trip, Irish rock star Bono confessed Thursday. Sharing a stage with the former US vice president at the annual gathering of world movers and shakers in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the U2 frontman joked that their friendship was a source of pressure on the domestic front. "He's been round my house and it's like... here's the recycler Al, you know... I've got a posh car, but it runs on ethanol Al," Bono said. Acknowledging that a career in rock music was...

British doctors are warning that mandating environmentally friendly light bulbs poses health risks. New energy-saving fluorescent bulbs produce an intense light that may cause eruptions of eczema or increased incidences of skin cancer. Skin damage isn’t the only worry, though. These lights can also trigger migraines, dizziness, and spark seizures in people with epilepsy. Such bulbs have been made mandatory in a variety of locations including the United Kingdom, Australia, Nova Scotia, California, Connecticut, North Carolina and Rhode Island. The health warning was issued by Spectrum, a consortium of charities working with people with light sensitive health conditions, and the...

Nashville, Tenn. - This week, PETA sent a letter to all the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates--including Sen. Fred Thompson--explaining that a 10-cent-per-pound "sin" tax on meat could go a long way in protecting the environment, reducing health-care costs, and adding dollars to the U.S. Treasury. PETA points out that meat is the leading cause of global warming--according to a 2006 United Nations report, the meat industry emits 40 percent more global-warming gases than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, Hummers, airplanes, and ships in the world combined--and has been conclusively linked to serious illnesses, including heart disease, some types of...

Critics have long believed environmentalists were planning global domination. The problem with making a credible case against such an ambitious plan was simple: no environmental leader had published one. Yet conflicts over global warming, world trade, multinational corporations, population control, sustainable futures, and transnational government left little doubt that environmentalists in fact shared the unspoken aim of wielding supreme power over a green future. But there was no proof. For years, critics, lacking hard evidence, were reduced to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of suspicious environmentalist actions - funding from huge charitable trusts, ties to the broader "progressive" community, and...

The last time the three-wheeled Aptera was featured on our site, we promised to keep you abreast of any new information that we found. Thanks to a tip from a reader named Matthew, we are pleased to let you know that Aptera is now accepting orders. Aptera has a Web site here, but there is not a great deal of information or raw-data to be found there. A better source of information is at their MySpace page, which is here. According to this article, Aptera is looking at around 300 miles per gallon along with acceptable performance numbers of about...

A group of people concerned for the environment toured the border near Sierra Vista to see the newly constructed border fence. Among them was Congressman Raul Grijalva. As they tour the border, one of their concerns is about wildlife which won't be able to get across the new fence. "Anything larger than four inches wide will not be able to cross," says Matt Clark with Defenders of Wildlife. Another concern is that illegal traffic will be forced into environmentally sensitive river beds. "We're concerned about effects on hydrology. There's concern riverbeds may shift because of all these structures and increased...

The growth in human population and rising consumption have exceeded the planet's ability to support us, argues John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he says it is time to ring the alarm bells and take radical action in order to avert unspeakable consequences. We humans face two problems of desperate importance. The first is our global ecological plight. The second is our difficulty acknowledging the first. Despite increasing climate change coverage, environmental writers remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we've created. Many fear sounding alarmist, but there is an alarm to sound...

But the underlying causes of these monster fires aren't as well understood. Why do they keep happening at such intensity? One reason is that for years, groups that literally make a living by obstructing government efforts to manage forests have filed myriad lawsuits intended to delay, stall or stop anything resembling science. They seek to prevent the federal government from implementing balanced efforts to manage the land, including efforts to thin forests and brushland to help prevent catastrophic wildfire. Just last year in Southern California, an environmental advocacy organization filed a lawsuit against reasonable forest management impacting more than 3.5...

BERLIN (AFP) - German conservationists on Monday condemned the freeing of some 17,000 minks from a fur farm, apparently by animal rights activists, saying they would starve in the wild. "It was a political act, and it has nothing to do with protecting the environment," said Joern Ehlers from the German chapter of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). "These animals are going to die of hunger." Minks are carnivores who feed on small animals and those freed from the farm in Grabow, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Berlin, risked disturbing the ecological balance in the region,...

The fires in southern California are still burning out of control in some places. People are still fleeing in advance of the inferno as the blaze has consumed nearly 2,000 homes and threatens thousands of others. A billion dollars in damage so far and there is no relief in sight for the residents and officials who are living this nightmare. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual for the left, trying to score political points off of tragedy. This time, a couple of right wing pundits have chimed in, to the approving nods of some conservatives who have learned well the lessons...

Little Green Lies The sweet notion that making a company environmentally friendly can be not just cost-effective but profitable is going up in smoke. Meet the man wielding the torch Auden Schendler learned about corporate environmentalism directly from the prophet of the movement. In the late 1990s, Schendler was working as a junior researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank in Aspen led by Amory Lovins, legendary author of the idea that by "going green," companies can increase profits while saving the planet. As Lovins often told Schendler and others at the institute, boosting energy efficiency and reducing...

Get Your Hunt On - It’s good for the animals. By John R. Lott Jr. October 19, 2007, Do vegetarians benefit from hunting? Well, let’s just say that all those vegetarians who have adopted their non-meat eating lifestyles because they abhor harming animals might be in for a real shock. Farms actually depend crucially on the ability to kill animals that eat their crops. So vegetarians might consider whether the fine print under their organic labels actually contains the words “no animals were harmed in the making of this food.” With hunting season starting in various parts of the country,...

A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors. For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus." I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere...

Efforts to make the cityÂ’s newest fire station a "green building" is adding up to a lot more of another kind of green. The lowest of nine bids to build the 7,920-square-foot Fire Station No. 7 at West Green Meadows Road and Bethel Street totaled about $2 million, almost $400,000 more than the $1.62 million the city budgeted for the project. John Sudduth, ColumbiaÂ’s building regulations supervisor, said the city will now evaluate each item in the bid submitted by GBH Builders of Jefferson City to determine what drove up the cost. The architect for the project, Erik Miller of...

Like every great sales pitch, Mitt Romney's case for Mitt Romney is low on the hard sell. At the Sheraton Hotel here one recent morning, the boasting is handled by a former governor of South Carolina, who opens this "Ask Mitt Anything" session with a precis of the candidate's career. This includes academic achievements (Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School "in four years!") and election as governor of Massachusetts in 2002, which is described in a tone befitting a miracle. "He ran for governor in the bluest state of all blue states," says James Edwards, "the bluest state you...

Phoenix - Two environmental groups filed suit Friday, asking a federal judge to halt construction of at least part of the border fence planned through Arizona. Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club want U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle to issue a restraining order blocking further work on a two-mile stretch of the fence that goes through the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security conducts a legally required environmental impact study. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, contends the planned wall of up to 17 feet and some vehicle...

Environmental groups and California Attorney General Jerry Brown petitioned the federal government Wednesday to regulate on emissions from oceangoing ships that spew heat-trapping gases responsible for global warming. In separate written requests, they asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt standards for carbon dioxide emissions from the thousands of cargo ships, cruise liners and other large vessels that dock at American ports each year. Marine vessels are responsible for nearly 3 percent of the world's greenhouse gases - equal to the amount generated by all cars in the U.S. - and ship emissions are projected to grow by more...

When you build a skyscraper, you must heavily insulate the steel beams. This prevents them from melting in case of fire, or at least delays the melting long enough for people to escape the building. When the Empire State Building was built, its steel beams were insulated with concrete. That was a very expensive and difficult process. In the late 1940s, a man named Herbert Levine invented a spray fireproofing composed of asbestos and mineral wool. The World Trade Center was designed to have this asbestos insulation on its steel beams. The contractors completed the first 64 floors using this ...

Colorado Sens. Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard say they will push to have six helicopters permanently stationed at the unique military aviation training site in Gypsum. The Colorado Army National Guard’s High-Altitude Aviation Training Site, based at the Eagle County Airport, is the only place in the United States where pilots can practice flying in the high-altitude conditions they see in Afghanistan and Iraq. Salazar said the military has to bring in helicopters whenever it sends pilots to use the site. He said more pilots could get the training if aircraft were based there. He hopes to add to add...