Free Republic

Climate Change: As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December. It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria. The collapse of the talks coupled with the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put...

Here's Al Gore at it again, making insane claims on the Conan O'Brien show the other night. The Earth's interior is several MILLION DEGREES, Al? Seriously? I mean, who knows if geothermal energy makes any sense to pursue, but its credibility gets undermined when Earth-worshiping nutbags like Al Gore just make up huge numbers as they go along. The fact is that the inside of the Earth never gets more than several THOUSAND degrees celsius. How stupid do you have to be to believe that we can live only "several kilometers" from a core that is "several million degrees" hot?...

Here's Al Gore at it again, making insane claims on the Conan O'Brien show the other night. The Earth's interior is several MILLION DEGREES, Al? Seriously? I mean, who knows if geothermal energy makes any sense to pursue, but its credibility gets undermined when Earth-worshiping nutbags like Al Gore just make up huge numbers as they go along. The fact is that the inside of the Earth never gets more than several THOUSAND degrees celsius. How stupid do you have to be to believe that we can live only "several kilometers" from a core that is "several million degrees" hot?...

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency." As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee. As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points...

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Environmentalism: As polls show belief in global warming is dropping, a new study suggests that dogs and cats, like people, are a plague upon the earth. They say people should have edible pets. Here, kitty, kitty. A new Pew Research Center study conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 says the number of Americans who think there's solid evidence the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades has plummeted from 71% in April 2008 to 57% today. Over the same period, there's been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising...

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is the smartest and richest animal rights group around.  Unlike PETA, it doesn’t openly proselytize that old animal rights religion, e.g., sentience gives moral value, “a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy,” the quote from Ingrid Newkirk and title of a certain author’s soon to be published book. This strategy has been very effective, allowing HSUS a level of mainstream respectability that other animal rights groups can’t match.But make no mistake, HSUS is about animal rights–eventually ending all animal husbandry and human hegemony over fauna–and its head, Wayne...

...I always enjoy it when the mask slips and the warm-mongers explicitly demand that we adopt a massive poverty expansion program to save the planet. "I don't think a lot of electricity is a good thing," said Gar Smith of San Francisco's Earth Island Institute..."I have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity." He regretted that African peasants "who used to spend their days and evenings in the streets playing music on their own instruments and sewing clothing on foot-pedal-powered sewing machines" are slumped in front...

Proving once again that foolish ideas don't die or fade away -- they walk the earth eternally, preying on the brains of the living -- scientists at a UK think tank have determined that the greatest threat to the planet is more human beings. "The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights," explains Professor John Guillebaud, co-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT). "The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would...

Swine flu? Global warming? Toxic oceans? Why does Mother Nature sometimes seem to be on the attack? According to the decades-old "Gaia hypothesis," it's because Earth is a self-regulating system that is responding to our own excesses. In a new book titled "The Vanishing Face of Gaia," British biologist James Lovelock says humanity is "Earth's infection." "Individuals occasionally suffer a disease called polycythaemia, an overpopulation of red blood cells. By analogy, Gaia's illness could be called polyanthroponemia, where humans overpopulate until they do more harm than good," Lovelock writes. He says the cure won't come until the human tribe is...

Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001 (l), but not this year (r) There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time. The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting. The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period. Last...

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Southeast Asia's tsunami-ravaged coral reefs have bounced back with surprising speed, according to a study released Friday, four years after the deadly waves hit.... ....Surveys of coral reefs after the tsunami showed that up to one-third were damaged and experts predicted it would take a decade for them to fully recover.

’Tis the season … to be green. No, not even the traditions of Christmas are immune to the efforts of global warming activism. No, it’s not Al Gore’s, “How Greenhouse Gases Stole Christmas,” but a children’s story is pushing a similar green agenda. The recently published book by Anne Margaret Lewis called “Santa Goes Green” is about a boy who writes Santa and asks him to help raise awareness about global warming so that his adopted polar bear won’t lose its home. “You see, it’s like this Santa,” the book reads. “I’ve adopted a polar bear named Leopold. He is...

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls,” poet John Donne wrote, “It tolls for thee.” In this case the bells will toll for the entire earth. At least three Beverly churches will toll their bells 350 times before Dec. 15, the 350th day of the year.

The idea that life on Earth might have originated elsewhere, on Mars, for example, has gained currency in recent times as we’ve learned more about the transfer of materials between planets. Mars cooled before the Earth and may well have become habitable at a time when our planet was not. There seems nothing particularly outrageous in the idea that dormant bacteria inside chunks of the Martian surface, blasted into space by comet or asteroid impacts, might have crossed the interplanetary gulf and given rise to life here. But what of an interstellar origin for life on Earth? The odds on...

Let me say first of all, I love the environment. In fact, I spend most of my time in some environment or other. My family lives the low-packaging, low carbon, tedious recycling lifestyle. My wife is so committed to recycling that I'm convinced that when I'm gone, my body will be dragged to the curb on Wednesday night. So I have to say in a quiet voice that I'm sick and tired of hearing about carbon footprints, offset credits, green shift and global warming. Don't get me wrong -- I think looking after the Earth is a good thing. I...

Earth emits an ear-piercing series of chirps and whistles that could be heard by any aliens who might be listening, if they're out there. The sound is awful, a new recording from space reveals. Scientists have known about the radiation since the 1970s. It is created high above the planet, where charged particles from the solar wind collide with Earth's magnetic field. • Click here to hear the sounds. It is related to the phenomenon that generates the colorful aurora, or Northern Lights. The radio waves are blocked by the ionosphere, a charged layer atop our atmosphere, so they do...

A desire to understand the universe seems to be hard-wired into our brains.  However we need a worldview (from the German Weltanschauung which means, literally, "world view").  Continuing with the computer metaphor, a worldview corresponds to a disc operating system, a framework for receiving and processing data. Worldviews have changed over the course of history.  The ancient Greeks thought that otherwise inexplicable events such as thunderstorms and falling in love were the results of whimsical actions of Zeus and Cupid, respectively.  Shakespeare and his contemporaries believed in a heavenly harmony that was replicated here on earth.  Thus the sun ruled...

Yet with Mr. Ehrlich, as with Mr. Miller, it is the psychology of the duped disciples that raises the most questions. Ms. Mills, at least, demonstrates exactly the same ideological frenzy and moral vanity, the hatred of elders and the past, as a Red Guard denouncing his teachers in the Cultural Revolution. Even today, her speech has the power to frighten with its self-righteous malice. For while Ms. Mills is talking about the end of civilization, she is no more able than a Mao or a Savonarola to disguise her satisfaction at the prospect.