Free Republic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7awFypTnrOw

Surprises ruled the day at the National Clean Energy Summit, held September 7 in Las Vegas. The Summit, coordinated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the leftist advocacy group Center for American Progress, featured surprise appearances by SUVs, environmental protesters, praise for hydropower, and a dreary, steady rain as speaker after speaker sang the praises of solar power.

The rise of environmentalism poisoned liberals’ historical optimism.For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, American liberals distinguished themselves from conservatives by what Lionel Trilling called “a spiritual orthodoxy of belief in progress.” Liberalism placed its hopes in human perfectibility. Regarding human nature as essentially both beneficent and malleable, liberals, like their socialist cousins, argued that with the aid of science and given the proper social and economic conditions, humanity could free itself from its cramped carapace of greed and distrust and enter a realm of true freedom and happiness. Conservatives, by contrast, clung to a tragic sense of man’s...

On June 9th, Prince Charles delivered a stunning speech to the Center for Islamic Studies at Oxford wherein he called for a western pantheistic religious synthesis with Islam to help save the world from the impending environmental catastrophe looming on the apocalyptic horizon. Shockingly, Prince Charles strongly believes that Islam can play a critical role in bringing back ancient religious traditions that will promote a much needed check on western man’s unbridled enthusiasm for capitalism, power and money where science has been inappropriately exploited by commerce since the Industrial Revolution. Prince Charles presumes that such a course of action will...

Proving that there is no folly fallacious enough that it can't be written down, both in a book and in an oped in the Washington Post, Stan Cox, an agricultural scientist, has proposed to ban or greatly restrict air conditioning.

The following is a news release from the University of Arizona. TUCSON, AZ (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA) - A 4.88-meter-tall metal wall built along parts of the Arizona/Mexico border to try to keep out people is doing a good job of preventing the movement of some species of wildlife, University of Arizona researchers have found.Some animals that live near the border dwell in fragmented habitats that are separated by vast spreads of unsuitable land, said Aaron Flesch, senior research specialist with the UA School of Natural Resources and the Environment. "When you have habitat that is fragmented on the landscape, movement...

The state Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld regulators' approval of the $1.7 billion CapX2020 power-line project, shooting down citizen complaints that the enormous project is unnecessary and would harm the environment. The decision was a big loss for the United Citizens Action Network, NoCapX2020 and Citizens Energy Task Force, who were challenging the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission's 2009 approval of the major transmission buildout. The groups argued that since energy demand has been declining the expensive new power lines aren't needed. They also argued that regulators didn't adequately address the impacts on wildlife in certain areas such as the...

It's just a wasteful, reckless, unnecessary, ozone-destroying exercise Last Sunday, they ran the Coca-Cola 600 and the Indianapolis 500. That's about 1,100 unnecessary miles of tire treads wearing thin. My friends, auto racing is a road to nowhere. Ten years into a new millennium, it's time to put the exhaust pipes into an antique shop. It's time we engage in a new age of enlightenment, recognize auto racing as obsolete and end the around-the-oval madness. At the risk of being tossed out of the sports fraternity -- Who am I kidding? I was tossed out years ago; why do you...

One can imagine that living with Al Gore is a living hell. I would say that about all politicians but especially Al Gore. All of them are insanely driven to power, but in Al Gore’s case the 2000 election dispute changed him as a man. He started acting strangely. He took a teaching job for a spell which was metaphorically a time out from life. The long beard appeared soon after the recount, and then the fat Al Gore emerged as if he was eating every vote and voter. Al Gore became the butt of late night talk show monologues....

Climate Science: Noted scientists at a Chicago climate conference declare that global warming is not only dead, but that the planet faces a big chill for decades to come. What about those frozen wind turbines? It's not exactly Copenhagen or Kyoto, but the 700 scientists attending the fourth International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, had some chilling news of their own in the most liberal sense. "Global warming is over — at least for a few decades," Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told the gathering. "However, the bad news is that...

Three power plants on the San Diego County coastline face major changes — from shuttering operations to building new cooling towers — in the wake of a landmark ruling by California’s water-quality officials to protect sea life. The State Water Resources Control Board last week decided to phase out once-through cooling for seaside power plants because the process kills more than 2.6 million fish and 19 billion fish larvae annually, according to the agency. The policy may be contested by energy companies concerned about the cost of compliance, including fitting new infrastructure into existing facilities. Ratepayers statewide will pay the...

20 April 2010: An oil rig rented and operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, killing 11 workers. 21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig. 22 April 2010: The Deepwater Horizon collapses into the sea and sinks. 22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness. Meanwhile, 200,000...

It’s appropriate that for Earth Day a British court has essentially confirmed Gaia’s status as a goddess who is worshiped by eco-acolyte. What so many have observed—that beliefs about the environment have morphed into a new cult—is now being openly acknowledged by its members. And like all cults, this one rots human brains and endangers the human species. First, the case: Tim Nicholson was an environmental sustainability expert working for Grainger, the UK’s largest residential landlord. He was fired, he maintained, because of his views on global warming and a list of environmental issues about which he harangued his bosses....

(CNSNews.com) – For E. Calvin Beisner and his colleagues at the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation (CASC), every day is Earth Day because Christians are called by God to be good stewards of the planet and its inhabitants. Beisner believes that it is not carbon emissions but global warming activism and international climate treaties that are a threat to the nation’s future and the world’s poorest populations.

It’s appropriate that for Earth Day a British court has essentially confirmed Gaia’s status as a goddess who is worshiped by eco-acolyte. What so many have observed—that beliefs about the environment have morphed into a new cult—is now being openly acknowledged by its members. And like all cults, this one rots human brains and endangers the human species. First, the case: Tim Nicholson was an environmental sustainability expert working for Grainger, the UK’s largest residential landlord. He was fired, he maintained, because of his views on global warming and a list of environmental issues about which he harangued his bosses....

Science: An Icelandic scientist says climate change spurs volcanic eruptions such as the one disrupting air traffic in Europe. Rather, the evidence suggests volcanoes cause global cooling and Arctic ice to melt. The stunning eruption of a volcano under Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier has disrupted air traffic over the continent of Europe as vast plumes of steam and ash were spewed into the atmosphere. Once again, we witness the power of nature over man even as man blames himself for nature's acts. Almost every malady on earth has been blamed on global warming, so it wasn't all that surprising when Freysteinn...

AS well-intentioned gestures go, Earth Hour is hard to beat. At 8.30pm on Saturday, March 27, nearly a billion people in more than 120 countries demonstrated their desire to do something about global warming by switching off their lights for an hour. Earth Hour is surely one of the most successful publicity stunts to be dreamed up. First organised in Sydney in 2007 by the local chapter of the WWF, its popularity and the level of participation that generates has exploded in recent years, to the point that there is barely a corner of the earth that the campaign hasn't...

For decades they have thundered along America’s highways and choked up parking lots, a symbol of extravagance unchallenged by politicians, emissions standards or common sense. They are the four-wheel-drive behemoths known to the US Government as “light trucks” and to consumers as SUVs (sport utility vehicles) — but their easy ride as the world’s most conspicuous mobile polluters ended this week. In a coup that achieves something President Clinton promised but never delivered, President Obama has forced the big three US carmakers, and their unions, to accept tough mileage rules for cars and SUVs. The rules will cut emissions from...

(CNSNews.com) – Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said her agency’s inaugural regulations on greenhouse gas emissions on cars were only “the first” of such regulations, promising that her agency would move “deliberately” to institute regulations in other areas of the economy as well. Speaking to reporters on a conference call on Thursday to announce the new regulations on cars and light trucks, Jackson explained that – for now – the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was only regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks. “These are the first regulations that cover greenhouse gas emissions in the United...

Earth Hour Alert: at 8:30 PM (your time) turn on ALL your lights. In honor of Earth Hour, I am asking All willing Freepers to turn on All your lights, turn up your heat and turn on the a/c to cool it down, due a few loads of wash, start up every computer, make a few loaves of bread in the bread machine...if you have one, put a spot light in your yard. It is my understanding that the success or lack of it will be measured by how much electric wattage was used in that hour and satellite pictures...

GOODFIELD — At 8:29 p.m. Saturday, Leslie Friederich and her sons Tristan, 9, and Luka, 7, plan to run around the boys' grandma's house turning off all the lights. They'll then crank up the flashlights and light some candles, and the family will play board games together for about an hour. The Friederich family is one of millions of families around the world expected to turn off lights from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday central time for the third annual Earth Hour. Earth Hour is a global campaign of the World Wildlife Fund and is sponsored in Illinois by ComEd....

While the World Wildlife Fund is encouraging everyone all over the planet to shut off their lights and anything else running on electricity at 8 P.M. tonight to celebrate "Earth Hour," the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington D.C. based think tank, is telling everyone to turn everything on at that time instead and celebrate "Human Achievement Hour."

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Eating less meat will not reduce global warming, and claims that it will distract from efforts to find real solutions to climate change, a leading air quality expert said Monday. "We certainly can reduce our greenhouse gas production, but not by consuming less meat and milk," Frank Mitloehner, an air quality expert at the University of California-Davis, said as he presented a report on meat-eating and climate change at a conference of the American Chemical Society in California. Blaming cows and pigs for climate change is scientifically inaccurate, said Mitloehner, dismissing several reports, including one issued in...

Calls to save the planet by eating less meat are based on an exaggerated UN report linking livestock to global warming, according to an analysis of the study. Celebrities from Sir Paul McCartney to Gwyneth Paltrow have long urged less meat consumption but, according to air quality expert Dr Frank Mitloehner, the green campaign has been barking up the wrong tree. Dr Mitloehner says meat and milk production generates less greenhouse gas than most environmentalists claim - and highlights the source of confusion as a report from the UN. 'We certainly can reduce our greenhouse gas production, but not by...

here's a long list of leftist movies to look forward to this year... plus a few for us righties...

Politics: The water spigots are back on, at least temporarily, in California's Central Valley. Turned off to protect a tiny fish, they happen to be in the districts of two congressmen "undecided" on health care reform. One could chalk it up to good fortune or just good constituent service. But in the middle of a contentious health care debate marked by Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases, we may be forgiven if we find an announcement by the Department of the Interior regarding California's water supply a tad too coincidental. On Tuesday, the Department of the Interior announced it was increasing...

There is a simple test for determining whether something is a resource (something valuable) or just garbage (something you want to dispose of at the lowest possible cost, including costs to the environment). If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost...

Summary 1. Reconstructions of temperature over the past 1000 years have been an highly visible part of IPCC presentations to the public. CRU has been extremely influential in IPCC reconstructions through: coauthorship, the use of CRU chronologies, peer review and IPCC participation. To my knowledge, there are no 1000-year reconstructions which are truly "independent" of CRU influence. In my opinion, CRU has manipulated and/or withheld data with an effect on the research record. The manipulation includes (but is not limited to) arbitrary adjustment ("bodging"), cherry picking and deletion of adverse data. The problem is deeply rooted in the sense that...

If the never-ending string of snowstorms has you believing global warming is a hoax, Al Gore says think again. The former Vice President turned planet protector insists all that white stuff is just another sign of creeping climate change. Warmer temperatures increase the amount of water that gets drawn from the oceans into the air, causing more rain and the current deluge of snow, Gore explains in the New York Times.

Climate Fraud: A senator wants an investigation of the false climate testimony before Congress and wants Al Gore to reappear. The illegalities may involve more than just lying to Congress. At a hearing Tuesday by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, ranking Republican James Inhofe told EPA head Lisa Jackson that man-induced climate change was a "hoax" concocted by ideologically motivated researchers who "cooked the science." More than that, Inhofe, in releasing a GOP report questioning the science used to support cap-and-trade legislation, hinted that such activities may be part of a vast...

You must see this short video! YouTube: "Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama, speaks about Green Job Czar, Van Jones, at the Netroots Convention on August 12, 2009. Then Van Jones speaks about [a COMMUNIST] transforming [of] the whole society." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnDxzvc0OXk&feature=related

If giving away a multibillion-dollar fortune is hard work, Bill Gates has been slaving away since he relinquished active management of Microsoft Corporation in 2008. Perhaps the most loathed technology executive of the P.C. era, he now bottle-feeds African babies and champions touchy-feely models of capitalism as he yearns to become the world's most beloved philanthropist. But adoration from liberals comes with a high price, especially if you've been one of the most ruthless and successful businessmen in American history. You must not only lavish support on the right causes, but you must also hold the right opinions, whether they...

When Star Wars first came out, it was a quantum leap beyond anything I had ever seen in a theater before. I ended up watching it 26 times in the theater. I have not had that experience since - until today. In 3D and Imax, I saw Avatar. Yes, I know the liberal "love the trees BS" message people say it has, but it is science fantasy. Sure, the parallels between the indigenous "people" of the planet and the American Indians and simple tribal cultures of planet earth and their various forms of nature worship were thick enough to cut...

Energy: When even Chuck Schumer is upset with the White House, you know something's amiss. In this case, it's news that efforts to boost wind power with taxpayer stimulus dollars are filling foreign coffers and creating foreign jobs. According to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Investment Act has been spent on wind power. The goal was to further energy independence while creating American jobs. It has done neither. Of the money spent, according to the report, nearly 80% has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines. "In all...

The Pentagon's new four-year strategy review seeks to advance the Obama administration's effort to make climate change a key element of its domestic and international policies. The Quadrennial Defense Review report, which is meant to guide defense and military policies and weapons purchases, lists global warming and energy security as among the four most important security priorities, despite recent reports suggesting the science behind climate change has been skewed. Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, presented a less alarming view in his statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday. He noted that U.S. intelligence...

Despite its creepy implications, I was going to let that odd Super Bowl car commercial featuring the Green Police just ride quietly into the sunset. Until the even creepier announcement the following day from the Obama White House. That's when the worlds of fiction and fact, denial and disdain collided with a big, bad bang. About that commercial — you know the one from Audi — offering a disturbing glimpse into a future envisioned no doubt by environmental extremists of the ultra-lib left. A future where a meddlesome Green Police force swarms through neighborhoods, into homes and businesses, looking for...

If you've been watching the daily scandals destroy the credibility of the U.N. IPCC, then you might not realize that Cambridge, Massachusetts is in a state of climate emergency. This is not hyperbole, but an official policy order, passed by the City Council in May 2009, "recogniz[ing] that there is a climate emergency" and requesting the City Manager "to direct the appropriate city departments to increase the City's responses to a scale proportionate to the emergency."

Audi car commercial "hits home" for Gavin Newsom and other city dwellersAudi's "Green Police" Super Bowl ad was clearly out to mock environmentalist fervor -- and it hit close to home in greener-than-thou San Francisco. Perhaps that's because it was the brainchild of Audi's advertising agency, San Francisco independent Venables Bell & Partners. Sitting squarely in the "I am white, middle-class man, hear me roar" school of ads, the Cheap Trick-scored commercial suggested a world in which the type of individual decisions that seem meaningless but in the aggregate make a difference are enforced by enthusiastic law enforcement professionals in...

Is it me or were the Super Bowl commercials this year unusually ugly, misogynistic, and, worst of all, unfunny? Some of America’s biggest corporations seemed to be trying to play to Teabag America, and the results were as bitter as the teabaggers themselves. Amidst the dreck was a commercial from Audi featuring the “green police.” Here it is:

Tormenting citizens.

Be honest. It's what we're all thinking about the tree huggers' favourite vehicle and the tree huggers who drive them, ever since it was revealed just how easy it is to wrap one round a tree. The Toyota Prius "Not So Bloody Smug Now" Special Edition. Coming to a brick wall near you soon.

Does this really make you want to buy an Audi or stop the green police?

If you're like me, Audi's Green Police ad during yesterday's Superbowl was sort of a high point of creepiness -- and not just for its boomerific revival of a classic Cheap Trick song. No, the celebration of the right car purchase -- a "clean diesel" -- as a get-out-of jail-free card for a totalitarian eco-state sort of ruined car shopping for you while also hinting a bit too strongly at the direction in which the world is inching in its intolerant, lemming-like way. Our friends in Britain already have to worry about government snoops pawing through their garbage and forcing...

February 6, 2010 Save the planet? Darling, that’s so last season Ring-pull handbags and frocks made of milk? Celebrity fashionistas aren’t helping ecology, they are glorifying themselves Janice Turner Although I celebrate the Oscar nomination for Colin Firth, undisputed king of simmering internal conflict, I’m concerned about his wife Livia. I’m not sure she will cope, not after the Screen Actors Guild Awards when, “just hours” before the ceremony, her dress woven from milk — yes, milk — didn’t fit, and her clutch bag encrusted in ring-pulls clashed with her gold vegetarian shoes. Undeniably, as her Vogue blog put it,...

Environmentalists come in all kinds of lovable varieties. But what really matters is: which of us are best?Several months ago food author and all around eco-guru Michael Pollan was caught making the claim that "a vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef-eater in a Prius.” The tantalizing comparison immediately made meme-waves across the environmental world. If he was right, it could finally vindicate vegans and vegetarians everywhere who insisted that anyone serious about being an environmentalist had to do more than just make responsible transportation choices. They had to give up their meat, too. The...

Link to Article   A trio of House lawmakers yesterday introduced a bill to block U.S. EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, marking the latest in a string of bipartisan attacks against forthcoming climate rules.The measure from Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Missouri Reps. Ike Skelton (D) and Jo Ann Emerson (R) would amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit EPA from regulating greenhouse gases based on their effects on global climate change.The bill would also advance several of the farm state lawmakers' other priorities by stopping EPA from calculating land-use changes in foreign countries for determining U.S. renewable...

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has co-sponsored a bill to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee — which has some jurisdiction on climate issues — explained his thinking in a statement: “I have no confidence that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without doing serious damage to our economy.

Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, has condemned the US and other industrial economies, holding them responsible for the phenomenon of climate change. In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera, bin Laden criticised George Bush, the former US president, for rejecting the Kyoto pact and condemned global corporations. "This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions - whether intentionally or unintentionally - and about the action we must take," bin Laden said. "Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact."...

Global Warming: If we're serious about restoring science to its rightful place, the head of the U.N.'s panel on climate change should step down. Evidence shows he quarterbacked a deliberate and premeditated fraud. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been forced to back off its now-discredited claim that the Himalayan glaciers would soon disappear. But it's not true, the panel's vice chairman, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, told the BBC, that it was simply a "human mistake." The panel's chairman, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, who was forced to admit the claim had no basis in observable scientific fact, said its...

Gordon Fleming is, by his own account, an environmentally sensitive guy. He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store. Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough. Ms. Cobb chides him for running the water too long while he shaves or showers. And she finds it “depressing,” she tells him, that he continues to buy a steady stream of items online when her aim is for them to lead a less materialistic...