Free Republic

California's newest wind turbines may be killing more than 100,000 birds a year, according to a peer-reviewed study to be published in December. Those mortalities seem to climb the taller wind turbines get. And California wind turbines kill more wildlife per megawatt than identical turbines in other parts of the country. ... The study, conducted by Scott R. Loss and Peter P. Marra from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Migratory Bird Center and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tom Will, appears in the December 2013 issue of the journal Biological Conservation. The study was based on a survey of...

Pierre Desrochers gleefully introduces himself as the bête noir of Canadian local-food activists. An economic geographer at the University of Toronto Mississauga, he has written a book (co-authored with his wife, Hiroko Shimizu), that attempts to eviscerate the movement’s main arguments, from its economic rationale to its environmental one. Even the book's title is an upper cut aimed at local food’s leading "agri-intellectual," the prolific Michael Pollan. The Locavore’s Dilemma, Desrochers has styled his counterargument, with this baiting subtitle: In Praise of the 10,000-mile diet. A libertarian-leaning academic with a thick French-Canadian accent, Desrochers was in Washington, D.C., last week...

In the 1850s, on the steps of the Waco courthouse, Wallace Jefferson’s great-great-great-grandfather was sold. Today, Jefferson is chief justice of Texas’s Supreme Court. The governor who nominated him also nominated the state’s first Latina justice. Rick Perry, 61, the longest-serving governor in Texas history and, in his 11th year, currently the nation’s senior governor, says these nominations are two of his proudest accomplishments. French cuffs and cowboy boots are, like sauerkraut ice cream, an eclectic combination, but Perry, who wears both, is a potentially potent candidate for the Republican presidential nomination because his political creed is uneclectic, matching that...

In this morning's Washington Post, Suni Sharan, director of the Smart Grid Initiative at GE from 2008 to 2009, questions the validity of "the assumption that a 'clean-energy' economy will generate enough jobs to mitigate today's high level of unemployment." And yet, as he writes, "'green jobs' have become a central underpinning of the Obama administration's rationale to promote clean energy." He explains that "the near-term expected levels of investment in and adoption of renewable sources of energy mean that net job creation should top out in the tens of thousands, as opposed to the desired hundreds of thousands or...

NEWTON, Iowa – Marking Earth Day with a pitch for his energy plan, President Barack Obama on Wednesday called for a "new era of energy exploration in America" and argued that his proposal would help the economy and the environment at once. "The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy — it's a choice between prosperity and decline," Obama said in his first post-election trip to Iowa, the state that launched him toward the White House. "The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that...

Everybody jokes about "TMI" these days: "Too much information," we say laughingly, when someone tells a story full of embarrassing detail about some personal foible or intimate relationship. But in our information-overloaded society, the concept of TMI is no joke. The information avalanche coming from all sides -- the Internet, PDAs, hundreds of television channels -- is burying us in extraneous data that prevent important facts and knowledge from reaching a broad audience. Lawyers are familiar with this phenomenon. In fact, they use it to their advantage: They know that if you want to hide damaging information about a case,...

A new gasoline tax that ensured high prices would accelerate the move toward fuel-efficient vehicles and provide enough revenue to allow a cut in corporate taxes. On the surface, the market's behavior on certain days of June and July has been so illogical that my brain simply has refused to accept it. Double-digit intraday swings in prices of stocks without any material catalyst have become routine. But last week's trading has finally explained what should have been clear for a while: Though current economic troubles may have started with lax credit and underwriting standards and the ensuing subprime-mortgage fiasco, they...

Few people risk unpopularity when commenting on something as iconic to economic prosperity as the car. Precisely why, when one of the best-known consultants and writers on the automobile industry seeks to " finish off the car," you have to sit up and take notice. ... "The car is responsible for much of the pollution that is a cause of global warming. We therefore need to reduce our dependence on the automobile — as well as two/three-wheelers, buses and trucks — to address the world's environmental problems. Even if it takes 20 or 30 years for us to reduce our...

Laurie David has been called the high priestess of Hollywood activism: She's raised millions of dollars for environmental causes, helped bring Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth from lecture hall to big screen, and used pop-culture channels to spread the word about global warming. (snip) I woke up the morning after the election, November 3, and cried for three straight days. I couldn't stop. Not because my candidate lost, which he had, but because of what it meant for the solutions to global warming. We had just reelected a president who surrounds himself with advisors and staff culled from the oil...

Apparently, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people. Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth. Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “We are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion. The commentary reminded readers that Watson...

Snohomish County opinion Gore's candidacy heats up By Trip Quillman Special to The Times In spite of the late great Molly Ivins' admonition that only fools predict presidential elections, I cannot resist: Al Gore will run for the presidency in 2008, and he will win. As a psychotherapist who spends his days wondering what motivates people, I believe the case for a Gore candidacy is compelling. To have been victorious in the 2000 election (both The New York Times and The Washington Post concluded, ultimately, that Gore won the Florida vote) and yet to have lost that office would have...

This is a unintentionally funny GrenPeace ad from Youtube. It's hysterical on too many levels to count (yes that pun is intentional). I can think of 20 ways to parody it and I'm not all that funny. I'm posting it here in the hope that you all might be able to help keep track of the slew of video responses there is going to be to this little gem.

WASHINGTON - Drinking water may have a lot more in it than just H20 and fluoride, according to an environmental group's analysis of records in 42 states, including Wisconsin. A survey by the Environmental Working Group released today found 141 unregulated chemicals and an additional 119 for which the Environmental Protection Agency has set health-based limits. Most common among the chemicals found were disinfection byproducts, nitrates, chloroform, barium, arsenic and copper. The research and advocacy organization compiled findings from the states that agreed to provide data they collected from 1998 to 2003. That data comes from nearly 40,000 water utilities,...

Does anybody out there remember Jim Hightower? Don't feel bad if you don't since he has become a complete has-been. However, before blessedly fading away from public view about 10 years ago, Hightower was once hailed as the liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh. Years before Err America flopped on the airwaves, Jim Hightower bombed completely in the opinion of radio listeners. If you had ever had the "pleasure" of hearing Hightower's radio antics you would quickly understand why his radio ratings quickly plummeted to Al Franken levels. Although Hightower started out as a typical hard core Texas leftist, he...

Rachel Carson, a driving force behind the modern environmental movement, grew up in a modest homestead in Springdale Borough near the Allegheny River. For the budding marine biologist, the river's waters were an early inspiration. Now, more than four decades after Ms. Carson's death, her presence may return to those waters. Allegheny County Council tomorrow will consider renaming the Ninth Street Bridge in her honor. If the resolution is approved, Ms. Carson would join Roberto Clemente and Andy Warhol as namesakes for the three Downtown "Sister Bridges" that cross the Allegheny. "This is long overdue," said Esther L. Barazzone, president...

A German scientific team is doing something about global warming. The researchers have determined that the earth's orbit needs to be directed ever so slightly away from the sun -- thus cooling the planet down. The group has calculated that if just 600 million folks like us would jump up and down at precisely the same time, we could actually move earth. This is not a joke. They say that 110 million people are already signed on. "World Jump Day" is July 20, 2006.

EPA acts to reduce haze at U.S. parks New rules will require listing of emission sources Visitors to Guadalupe Mountains National Park savor the 360-degree views from Texas' tallest peak and night skies so black it's possible to see almost every star in the sky. Except on the days when haze clouds the view. Despite its remoteness, pollution from as far away as the southeastern United States, East Texas and western Mexico, has marred the park's scenery. New rules, finalized Thursday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will help restore clarity not only to the vistas of Guadalupe Mountains National...

One of the busiest guys on Capitol for the next six months will be Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), whom House International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay have put in charge of the new subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Dana’s assignment: Expose the entire slimy mess of the UN Oil-for-Food scandal and feed it to the fishes. Saddam Hussein demanded that all the monies of the UN program be run through one particular obscure French bank, the Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas. What he forgot was that the UN is in New York, so the whole $64 billion...

“That black stuff is hurting us.” ---Sen. John Kerry on oil (Greenwire) Washington, DC – U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) is quoted in today’s edition of Greenwire as saying, “that black stuff is hurting us,” with regard to oil. Members of the House Committee on Resources found the Senator’s comment absurd. “John Kerry is dead wrong,” Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-CA) said. “Oil doesn’t hurt Americans; John Kerry’s anti-energy policies hurt Americans. In fact, this is exactly the kind of rhetoric and bad policy that has led to the outsourcing of good American energy jobs. Last year alone, the United...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.MAYER STATE PARK, Ore. - (KRT) - In swimming down the Columbia River, Christopher Swain has tasted sewage, suffered six ear infections and numbed his body in winter water as cold as 38 degrees. So it was no big deal when he reached the Columbia Gorge and faced gusting winds whipping up seven-foot waves. With the aid of a powerful crawl stroke and well-timed kicks, he lifted himself up and over the breakers and continued his journey. Swain, a 35-year-old Portland acupuncturist, is on the homestretch of a 1,243-mile swim of the...