Free Republic

HHS:'Telework' Gives Gov't Employees More Time for 'Planning and Preparing Healthy Meals' May 17, 2013 By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says it wants as many as 20 percent of its workers to "telework," use an "alternative work schedule," or do both, in order to "reduce green house gas emissions," decrease "employee stress," and give these government workers more time for "planning and preparing healthy meals." So says one of the HHS "performance measures" detailed in an appendix to the department's latest strategic plan. HHS's performance measure "4.D.05" says: "Increase the percent...

Scientists have long used ancient shorelines to predict the stability of today's largest ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica believing, for example, that markings of a high shoreline from 3,000,000 years ago during a warm period on Earth were evidence of a high sea level due to ice sheet collapse at the time. This assumption has, in turn, led many to hypothesize that if the world's largest ice sheets collapsed before, the same could very well happen again as the Earth continues to warm again. More than ever, however, this theory is at risk of disintegrating under the weight of...

An overwhelming 97 percent of climatologists endorse the idea of human-caused global warming. As if the backing of NASA, 18 independent American scientific societies, and an intergovernmental panel established under the United Nations weren't enough to quell the protests popping up in comment sections across the Internet, a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters confirms — once again — that climatologists almost unanimously believe that climate change is directly related to human-made carbon emissions. Researchers pored over nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers from 1991 to 2011. These papers, according to Michael Todd at Pacific Standard, represented the...

A noted climatologist and recently-retired NASA research chief has entered the EU’s energy policy debate, with a warning that any re-industrialization strategy that increases fossil fuels use can only be short-term, irrational and economically wasteful. In a wide-ranging interview with EurActiv, James Hansen branded the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) “ineffectual” and flawed, and accused energy firms of preferring government bribes over investments in clean technology. Hansen, whose Congressional testimony on climate change in 1988 first popularized the issue in the United States, also said that approving the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to bring tar sands fuel from Canada to...

Closer cooperation between European countries and an emphasis on energy efficiency would be more effective at lowering prices in Europe than dreams about an American-style shale gas boom, the EU’s climate chief said on Thursday (16 May). Speaking at the European Business Summit, EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard called for “clever regulation” to drive innovation and for a liberalized EU energy market to lower prices, saying re-nationalization would be more costly than European-wide climate policies. “We need efficient and also cost-efficient energy systems. We need to liberalize the energy market, a Europeanized market. It is wrong that re-nationalization will be...

The scientific agreement that climate change is happening, and that it's caused by human activity, is significant and growing, according to a new study published Thursday. The research, the most comprehensive analysis of climate research to date, finds that 97.1% of the studies published between 1991 to 2011 that expressed a position on man made climate change agreed that it was happening, and that it was due to human activity. The study looked at peer reviewed research that mentioned climate change or global warming. Peer review is the way that scientific journals approve research papers that are submitted. In peer...

A blast of wet and chilly weather left some hilly areas of the UK cloaked in snow as well as spring blossom on Wednesday.... Among areas affected was the hamlet of Anchor, close to the border between Shropshire and Wales. Landlord Mike Steedman, who has run the Anchor Inn for the past 17 years, said he could not remember snow falling in the area during May....

IT'S A SCENE that could be from a '70s horror movie: A wave of ice crystals relentlessly marching towards homes in Minnesota in the United States. The massive ice floes have also destroyed 12 homes and damaged another 15 in Canada, which boarders Minnesota. According to emergency officials, a total of seven homes in Ochre Breach were "literally crushed" by the ice that rose up within minutes pushed by strong winds, Winnepeg Free Press reports. A resident caught footage of a wave of ice that creeped off another lake in Minnesota - as foam froze and was pushed ashore by...

.. Record low temperatures set at Toledo OH... A record low temperature was set at the Toledo Express Airport on Sunday may 12 2013. The temperature dropped to 30 degrees at 1140 PM EST breaking the old record of 34 degrees last recorded on may 12 1969.The temperature at the Toledo Express Airport remained seasonably cold overnight and registered 30 degrees at 145 am EST this morning. This equals and sets a new record low of 30 degrees which was last recorded on may 13 1946.... Frost advisory in effect from midnight tonight to 9 am EDT Tuesday...The National Weather...

Carbon dioxide levels indicate rise in temperatures that could lead agriculture to fail on entire continents It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming. That is the stark warning of economist and climate change expert Lord Stern following the news last week that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had reached a level of 400 parts per million (ppm).

The demonized chemical compound is a boon to pant life and has little correlation with global temperature. Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity. The cessation of observed...

Carbon dioxide levels have reached its highest throughout human history, recent figures from a US monitoring station show. The level in our atmosphere is now at a record high 400 parts per million, prompting renewed warnings of the ‘huge risks’ of climate change. The shocking figures, which have risen from 270ppm before the Industrial Revolution, is a result of human activity such as burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The preliminary figures have come from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) monitoring station in Hawaii. The greenhouse gas has not been at such high levels for around three...

The governor won’t meet with a leading New Jersey warmist critic. Hello from the Paul Robeson Center for The Arts, located on Paul Robeson Place, just a few blocks down from Princeton University. They like their hardcore communists here in Central Jersey. But they also make really great coffee, which is why I make it a point to meet up with my long-time lefty friend in Palmer Square where we have plenty of options. In print, we’ll call her “Moonbeam,” to prevent our association from destroying her standing in the community, and to make it clear that her environmental policy...

AP article. Whenever I post anything from the AP, it disappears. But the article is lamenting the incredible rise in carbon dioxide. Thoughts?

With a veto-proof majority, the Missouri legislature approved a popular bill protecting private property and due process rights by banning a deeply controversial United Nations “sustainability” scheme known as UN Agenda 21. The legislation, SB 265, now heads to Democrat Governor Jay Nixon, who has not yet taken a public position on the issue. ~snip~ The widely criticized UN scheme, adopted by governments and dictatorships worldwide at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro more than two decades ago, has been marketed as a way to make humanity more “sustainable.” According to UN documents, however, Agenda 21 essentially seeks to...

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have broken through a symbolic mark. Daily measurements of CO2 at a US government agency lab on Hawaii have topped 400 parts per million for the first time. The station, which sits on the Mauna Loa volcano, feeds its numbers into a continuous record of the concentration of the gas stretching back to 1958. The last time CO2 was regularly above 400ppm was three to five million years ago - before modern humans existed. Scientists say the climate back then was also considerably warmer than it is today. Carbon dioxide is regarded as the...

Conservatives may be less likely to buy energy efficient light bulbs if they're packaged as environmentally friendly, new research suggests. In one study, participants were given $2 to spend on a light bulb with a choice between a 50-cent incandescent bulb and a $1.50 compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb. They were told the CFL bulb would last 9,000 more hours and reduce energy costs by 75 percent compared with the old-fashioned bulb. Both liberal and conservative participants were more likely to choose the CFL bulb, the researchers found. But if the CFL bulb was marked with a sticker that said...

Roy Spencer is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama Huntsville who may be the world's most important scientist. He has discovered scientific insights and theories that cast great doubt on global warming doctrine... --snip-- The pressure that is building on climate doctrine is the failure of the Earth to warm, a trend that has now continued for 16 years. The longer warming is stalled, in the face of constantly increasing CO2, the harder it becomes for the believers to continue believing. Compounding the failure of the Earth to warm is the failure of the oceans to warm for...

NEW YORK—Former President Bill Clinton and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new climate initiative Monday to help cities measure their risk for severe weather and natural disasters. The hope is to help curb the impact of deadly storms like Superstorm Sandy, which devastated parts of New York City last October. The project will be run through C40, a coalition of major cities around the world that united to study the impact of climate change on their municipalities. The group, chaired by Bloomberg, merged two years ago with the Clinton Climate Initiative—an offshoot of Clinton’s philanthropic foundation. Known...

Updated 2 May 2013 to correct typo on date of previous low tornado countThe 12-month period from May 2012 to April 2013 was remarkable for the absence of tornado activity and tornado impacts in the United States.We can start by looking at the number of EF1 and stronger tornadoes during that period. A final count is available through January 2013 and we have a pretty good estimate of how many occurred in February through April, although final numbers won’t be available until July. Although the 12 month total may change a little bit with the final data, it’s unlikely to...

How do you top making national news for bigotry? Trying getting people to “Give Up (Eating) Hamburgers to Stop Climate Change.” For loony lefty syndicated columnist David Sirota, it’s all just another day at the office. Sirota made national news for his bizarre and bigoted hope that the Boston bomber would turn out to be “a white American.” Fresh off that fiasco, Sirota has turned his sights to changing the climate by changing America’s diet. According to Sirota’s May 2 column, “the fastest way to reduce climate change” simply “requires us all to eat fewer animal products.” In case that...

It will collect radar data for the purpose of understanding changes in the ice NASA will begin testing a new rover tomorrow, which is expected to measure changes in Greenland's ice sheet.  The rover is called GROVER, which is short for Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research. It's a 6-foot-tall, 800 pound, autonomous vehicle complete with solar panels and two repurposed snowmobile tracks.  The solar-powered GROVER will travel Greenland's surface layer collecting measurements in order to help scientists understand changes in the ice sheet. A ground-penetrating radar -- which is powered by two rechargeable batteries -- is placed at the...

reader “agimarc” writes: As with the Lower 48 states, spring is late and cold here in central Alaska. Fairbanks reported a record low of 2 degrees F above zero Sunday, breaking the previous record of 8 from 1924.Here in Anchorage, looks like we are around 3 – 4 weeks late with ice of local lakes and snow off the ground. Winter was not particularly hard, but it all changed with a very cold April. And at this point it does not appear things will be warming up soon. So much for manmade global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions.Story...

From the Fahrenheit 451 department comes this indictment of California’s higher education’s “tolerance” for opposing views. When I first got the tip on this, I thought to myself “nobody can be this stupid to photograph themselves doing this” but, here they are, right from the San Jose State University Meteorology Department web page:The caption from the SJSU website reads: This week we received a deluge of free books from the Heartland Institute {this or this }. The book is entitled “The Mad, Mad, Made World of Climatism”. SHown above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book....

by stevengoddard At the two-thirds mark for meteorological spring, 2013 was the second coldest spring on record – slightly warmer than 1975. Data is from here : Index of /pub/data/ghcn/daily/hcn/ But 1975 had an unusually warm May at 17C. The two warmest months of May were in 1934 and 1896. Both graphs above show the average of all daily temperatures at all US HCN stations, calculated per year.The forecast for the first two weeks of May is well below normal, so odds are that the spring of 2013 will be the coldest on record in the US.  This is what Fort...

March 2013 will be remembered for its cold, miserable weather, and Environment Canada confirms that it ranked as the second-coldest March in the last 50 years. "It was so winter-like, my gosh it was even more winter-like than February," said David Phillips, chief meteorologist with Environment Canada. In Regina, the average daily temperature during March measured around -12.3 C. "The normal would be around -5 C," explained Phillips, "and I needn't remind you that last year, the temperature was close to 1 C. So think about it, (that's) 13 degrees colder than it was the year before."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently warned that sequestration would cause “suspension of important activities, curtailed training, and could result in furloughs of civilian personnel” but the spending cuts haven’t killed the green fuels program, as the Pentagon has continued purchasing renewable fuel at $59 per gallon. “In March, Gevo entered into a contract with the Defense Logistics Agency to supply the U.S. Army with 3,650 gallons of renewable jet fuel to be delivered by the second quarter of 2013,” Gevo announced this week in its first quarter financial report. “This initial order may be increased by 12,500 gallons. All shipments...

A number House Democrats have written a resolution(PDF) calling on Congress to recognize that climate change will hurt the plight of women more than men; driving women into “transactional sex� for survival — among other horrible fates. Now, nothing causes more transactional sex than poverty, and few conditions bring more poverty to women around the world than limiting capitalism and free trade. One wonders if a poor woman in say, Bangladesh, would be happier and healthier with a car, an air conditioner and processed food rather than that light carbon footprint they now carry? I wish they had a choice.So...

How Does An Ice Age Start? With One Snowflake Illustration by Brian ZinchukThe Empire has decided to invade the ice plant of Earth. April 17, 2013 By Brian Zinchuk Hindsight is 20/20, they say. So looking back several decades, the scientists agreed – if they had to pick a date when it all started, it was 2013. Thirteen is aptly considered unlucky, for it was the year with no summer. Scratch that. It was the first year with no summer. Moods were glum throughout Western Canada that spring. April showers were supposed to bring May flowers. Instead, all the precipitation...

Here is a comparison of the snow and ice charts published by the NOAA for April 27, 2012 and April 27, 2013. One year doesn't make a trend, but it is interesting. 2012:

Right now, way too many lawmakers in Washington flat-out refuse to face the facts when it comes to climate change. We're never going to make real progress on this issue unless members of Congress get serious. Instead, some of them have made a habit of publicly mocking it. We thought it was time to call them out for denying what's basic science. Watch this embarrassing video of climate deniers in Congress -- and say you're ready to help hold them accountable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=biUc0D6_UPA The science matters in this. That's the message way too many people in Washington need to hear right...

Raleigh, N.C. — It took just 45 minutes Thursday morning for the Senate Commerce Committee to approve a massive rollback of rules and regulations meant to protect the state's environment. Senate Bill 612 would require cities and counties to repeal any rules stricter than state or federal law. It would also require a list of environmental oversight boards and agencies to repeal or rewrite any state rule stricter than federal regulation on any given matter. Those agencies include the Mining and Energy Commission, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Environmental Management Commission, the Commission for Public Health, the...

New technology and a little-known energy source suggest that fossil fuels may not be finite. This would be a miracle—and a nightmare. As the great research ship Chikyu left Shimizu in January to mine the explosive ice beneath the Philippine Sea, chances are good that not one of the scientists aboard realized they might be closing the door on Winston Churchill’s world. Their lack of knowledge is unsurprising; beyond the ranks of petroleum-industry historians, Churchill’s outsize role in the history of energy is insufficiently appreciated. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. With characteristic...

Turns Back To Coal, Abandons Emissions TargetsFrom Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPFThe Japanese government is moving to speed up the environmental assessment process for new coal-fired power plants. According to Japanese media reports, the government intends to make 12 months the maximum period for assessing and approving new coal-fired power plants as its utilities seek to develop more power stations to stem surging energy supply bills. With the government considering the closure of much of the installed nuclear capacity over the medium term, the spotlight is back on coal as the cheapest energy source, notwithstanding plans to cut carbon...

The European Parliament just voted down a measure that would have attempted to revive its carbon market, likely dooming it to a slow and undignified death. This was a last-ditch effort to drive the EU’s carbon price back to a level that would incentivize green reforms. And it failed. --------------------------------------------------- The EU has been the global laboratory testing the green agenda to see how it works. Today’s story means that the guinea pig died; the most important piece of green intervention in world history has become an expensive and embarrassing flop. It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of this for...

To begin with I was the only critical voice in New Zealand. Last week I attended a packed meeting of the Press Club in Wellington to hear Lord Monckton tear apart the IPCC and everything connected with it. The University scientists will not listen to him. But one of the organisers of the meeting was from the Music Department. But, surely, we are at the beginning of the end. The globe has stopped warming; even when measured by the botched-up biased system that they favour. The Kyoto Protocol is dead. Emissions by former members are in steady decline compared with...

I would add 9/11 Truther, but there’s only so much room in the headline to list all his many virtues. Let’s start with the obvious one. Here is how Eric Margolis, a member of the Academic Board of Ron Paul’s new Institute for Peace and Prosperity, greeted the election of Barack Obama. Americans did not `liberate’ Iraq, but they certainly liberated their own nation last week by sweeping the Republican Party from power. One prays America’s long nightmare of foreign aggressions, fear, religious extremism, and flirting with neo-fascism is finally at an end…A forward-looking Democratic Party that represents America’s increasingly...

What the government giveth, the government can take away. So it came to pass that the glory of green investments fell over its peak and started to slide — a slide we hope will continue forthwith with speed until such day that Renewables Actually Work. Weakest quarter for clean energy investment since 2009  [Bloomberg] 15 April 2013 Investment worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 was $40.6bn, down 22% on a year earlier, due to a downturn in large wind and solar project financings London and New York, 15 April 2013 – Global investment in clean energy in the...

Paging Seth Borenstein! 9787 new cold and snow records since March 13thIf this were a month of a heatwave across thus USA, like last July, you can bet it would be MSM headlines all over the place and breathless stories from AP’s Seth Borenstein and pronouncements from the Mannian climate cartel about how all this is connected to global warming, er climate change, er climate disruption.Source hereBut nary a peep so far about this cold wave lasting over a month that has generated 9787 records posted by NOAA/NWS.Conversely, here is the list of high temperatures, and high minimum temperatures.Source hereThe...

Good news on natural gas is bad news for a Democratic party full of environmental true-believers Much has been said recently about the deep tensions within the Republican party. Far less has been said about a sharp division arising inside the Democratic party. That latter tension was front and center recently when former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Daily News drawing on his experience overseeing extensive natural gas development in Pennsylvania. “If we choose to embrace natural gas, it will help us get past a number of significant economic and environmental challenges,” Rendell wrote....

will always remember the day I woke to the news that more than 2,000 fires were burning in California. I thought I must not have heard correctly. Two thousand fires? How could that be? In the end, the state's brave firefighters, joined by contingents from out of state, won the battle. But not before 11 emergency declarations were issued and more than 400,000 acres burned. Countless lives and livelihoods were ruined. Today, there's a new disaster looming, and although it's not as riveting or dramatic as walls of flames and billowing black smoke, it needs our immediate attention. The draft...

Leilani Munter, a race car driver, environmental activist and self-described “eco-athlete” was featured on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Earth Day website in a video promoting bike riding, using public transportation and veganism. “I’m aware of the carbon footprint of my race car and my lifestyle,” Munter said in the video. “For every race I’m in, I adopt an acre of rainforest to offset my effect on the environment.” …

Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970: "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." — Harvard biologist George Wald "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." — New York Times editorial "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever...

Uh oh, somebody in Germany in a position to influence others in the Green movement has started thinking for himself, shrugging off suggestions from a climate scientist that “its all in his head”.Pierre Gosselin reports about a story by lefty journalist Harald Martenstein of Die Zeit: “I was ready to open my home to the Schröders as soon as they would no longer be able to take the 60°C heat in the shade. But instead it got colder and colder. At Uckermark in the wintertime it was -20°C for weeks.” Martenstein also noticed that Britain had endured its coldest winter in...

MILWAUKEE - Gaylord Nelson, the former governor and U.S. senator from Wisconsin who founded Earth Day and helped spawn the modern environmental movement, died Sunday. He was 89. Nelson died of cardiovascular failure at his home in Kensington, Md., a Washington suburb, said Bill Christofferson, Nelson's biographer and a family spokesman. "He died peacefully. His wife was with him," Christofferson said. Thirty-five years after the first Earth Day, April 22 is still a day on which many people plant trees, clean up trash and lobby for a clean environment. A conservationist years before it became fashionable, Nelson was recognized as...

NEW DELHI: Google on Monday came out with an animated doodle to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the Earth Day.

Monday, April 22, is Earth Day. Begun in 1970, it led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. It is the global platform for the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing the Earth to warm and the basis of the environmental movement’s ceaseless efforts to reduce the use of energy for any reason.

After a foray in a cult, one of the first steps on the path back to reality is the process of deprogramming. Could it be that this step is now being self-administered by the German mainstream media? It appears so. Now that the global mean temperature curve has drifted out of and below the IPCC’s projected range, panic is breaking out. The mother of German green weeklies, Die Zeit, appears to be taking measurements at the back of the house in preparation for the installation of a back door! Rahmstorf is back there with them, trying to talk them out...

A recent flurry of eruptions on the sun did more than spark pretty auroras around the poles. NASA-funded researchers say the solar storms of March 8th through 10th dumped enough energy in Earth’s upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years. “This was the biggest dose of heat we’ve received from a solar storm since 2005,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA Langley Research Center. “It was a big event, and shows how solar activity can directly affect our planet.” Earth's atmosphere lights up at infrared wavelengths during the solar storms of March 8-10, 2012. A...

A recent NASA report throws the space agency into conflict with its climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earth's atmosphere. NASA's Langley Research Center has collated data proving that “greenhouse gases” actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun. The data was collected by Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry, (or SABER). SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earth’s upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances thought to be playing...