Free Republic

Forget about the birthers, and the nutty claims that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. More and more, we are hearing from people who might best be described as anti-birthers. Their claims have nothing to do with long- versus short-form Hawaiian birth certificates. Instead, they advance a simple proposition: that the birth of each additional American child is a kind of calamity for the environment. The most recent example of anti-birth thinking comes from Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax of Oregon State University. In a study called “Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals,” they suggest...

For people who are looking for ways to reduce their "carbon footprint," here's one radical idea that could have a big long-term impact, some scientists say: Have fewer kids. A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environment-friendly practices people might employ during their entire lives - things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs. "In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on...

Unfortunately for Democrats, global warming is much more complicated science than what their theories predict. The greatest contributing factor to global temperatures isn’t atmospheric carbon dioxide, it’s the sun. The sun’s release of energy has natural variations and it is currently in a state known as solar minimum; the lowest energy output by the sun as it oscillates through an approximate 11 year cycle of activity, also known as the Schwabe cycle. This is the primary reason for the colder than normal temperatures recorded across the country this summer.

The call was made in the report ‘Hope in God’s Future’, received by the annual Methodist Conference on Wednesday. The report encourages people to repent in particular for their complicity in systems that exploit creation and prey on the powerless, but also offers advice on how Christians can make positive lifestyle changes. Rev David Gamble, the President of the Conference, said the report sent out a challenge to the Church to tackle the issue head on and commit to “significant action” over the next few years. “The first step in making a difference is the recognition of what we’ve done...

Enlarge ImageSlimming down. Sheep on the remote Scottish isle of Hirta have been getting smaller.Credit: A. Ozgul/Science Call it the case of the shrinking sheep. On the remote Scottish island of Hirta, sheep have been getting smaller, shrinking an average of 5% over the last 24 years. Don't blame evolution, though. Researchers say climate change is the real culprit. The Hirta sheep belong to a breed known as Soay, after the remote Scottish island where they arose. One of the most primitive forms of domestic sheep, Soays first came to Hirta in 1932. Because Hirta is a remote island,...

The EPA is now considering designating CO2 a dangerous pollutant. The regulation of essential elements of life by our government scares me. It should scare us all. I am devastated by the notion that our own government founded on freedom would regulate and control the most fundamental aspects of life on earth. Regulation on life's important things is certainly tyranny and certainly will destroy the world, at least the nation and supposed freedom, we leave to our children. Please, do not regulate the essential elements of life. Freedom is too precious to take it away in such pointless ways. Carbon...

Mankind has really been put in its place over the past 500 years. Why only the other day, back in 1400, the sun orbited the earth; man was God's consummate work of art; humans were masters of themselves and the domain God provided for them. Our secular fall from grace began with Copernicus, who dislodged the world from its celestial catbird seat. Later, Darwin established that man, far from being the animal kingdom's pièce de résistance, was a bit like a baboon in... --snip-- One activist author posits that the planet can support only one billion people -- a number...

In his commencement address to the University of Notre Dame’s 2009 graduating class last month, President Obama recognized an obvious truth with his statement that pro and anti abortion advocates have certain irreconcilable differences. Those differences were obvious when Obama’s invitation to Notre Dame was subject to controversy and pronounced public disagreement. It was obvious again during the President’s commencement address when anti-abortion advocates vocally challenged the President and were, in turn, vocally challenged by others in the audience. What might not be so obvious, however, is that one of the differences between the two sides of this issue, whether...

WASHINGTON—Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in the middle of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on U.S.-China climate change relations, leaned forward in his chair and asked the expert panel, “What’s the catastrophe?” Lugar, a long-time advocate of emissions reductions and global warming prevention, asked the expert panel to clarify just what the disaster would be if carbon emissions are not reduced. The three members of the panel, all experts on greenhouse gas emissions in China, looked at each other and hesitated. The panel had reached a consensus that the United States and China contribute 40 percent of the world’s greenhouse...

Growing up as a teenager in the 1950s, I could not wait to get my license to drive and I liked the sporty look of the British MG. These days I drive a Volkswagen. In that short tale can be found the seeds of the end of the American auto industry. Here’s some history. In 1952, the merger of several British auto companies resulted in the British Motor Corporation. It was the largest of its day with 39% of British output. Despite established dealerships for the various models, a series of poor management decisions resulted in the loss of market...

The social engineering spin of the green mindset dictates that we should buy ‘green' cars, divert food crops to fuel them, restrict air travel and ban plasma TVs and, of course, traditional light-bulbs. So let's take a closer look at the current green-led switchover: the dimly-lit realities behind ‘green' light bulbs. Back to the ‘dark ages' In the US, Republican Jane Harman (D-Calif.) introduced legislation aimed at setting a target date of 2012 to ban the sale of traditional incandescent light-bulbs, switching America over to low-energy alternatives. After all, low-energy "compact fluorescent bulbs" (CFLs) use just one-fifth of the energy...

The new Honda Insight is supposed to be the "hybrid for everyone," but does that include Republicans? A new Wall Street Journal article runs down the well-known tale of how, mostly, the people who drive hybrids are on the left side of American politics (remember this?). From there, Democratic political consultant Mark Penn asks his big question: "Where Are the Republican Hybrid Buyers?" From the article: But if we really want to expand the number of [hybrid] buyers, we should develop new arguments that appeal to the Republicans who have been holding back. To look at it another way,...

By Marc Morano - Climate Depot - May 4, 2009 Washington, DC - NASA scientist James Hansen, perhaps the most vocal voice in the U.S. warning of a man-made global warming crisis, has declared he hopes Congressional efforts to pass a cap-and-trade climate bill fail. "I hope cap and trade doesn't pass, because we need a much more effective approach,” Hansen said during a keynote lecture at Columbia University's climate conference on May 2, 2009. Hansen urged Congress to “abandon cap-and-trade initiatives altogether and implement a simple carbon tax instead” according to a May 4, 2009 article titled "Hansen hopes...

A fired British executive is suing his former employer on the grounds that he was unfairly dismissed due to religious views – his belief in global warming.  According to the Independent: “In the first case of its kind, employment judge David Sneath said Tim Nicholson, a former environmental policy officer, could invoke employment law for protection from discrimination against him for his conviction that climate change was the world's most important environmental problem.� The judge ruled that Nicholson’s extreme green views fit the definition of “a philosophical belief under the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations, 2003.�  So strong were...

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said he won’t compromise on his proposed 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases over the next decade in the face of criticism from lawmakers who say the economy could suffer. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aaE9Lr1448tM&refer=home

EPA agrees to study acidic seas; move adds to regulation momentum The Obama administration took another step toward regulating carbon dioxide, issuing a notice Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency will review whether those emissions should fall under the Clean Water Act. The EPA earlier this year determined that C02 should be regulated under the Clean Air Act due to its impact on temperatures. But Tuesday's notice — soliciting scientific data as to what extent seas are made more acidic by C02 — could extend regulation out to U.S. waters. The notice was in response to a petition filed by...

POKANE, Wash. – The quest for squeaky-clean dishes has turned some law-abiding people in Spokane into dishwater-detergent smugglers. They are bringing Cascade or Electrasol in from out of state because the eco-friendly varieties required under Washington state law don't work as well. Spokane County became the launch pad last July for the nation's strictest ban on dishwasher detergent made with phosphates, a measure aimed at reducing water pollution. The ban will be expanded statewide in July 2010, the same time similar laws take effect in several other states.YahooNews

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government. Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability". Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice. Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton. "We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to...

A physicist from Colorado State University and his colleagues from the North American Carbon Program (NACP) have discerned and confirmed the unforeseen advantages of rising carbon dioxide levels. Through the processes of photosynthesis and respiration, scientists have been able to elucidate why plants are growing more rapidly than they are dying. The NACP is employing methods, such as the use of cell phone and aircraft towers to monitor and retrieve carbon data for their continuing study. Too much carbon dioxide can be a bad thing, but sometimes it can have a positive effect on plants and trees. The more carbon...

The atmosphere is cooling, the ice is expanding, the seas are not rising -- even though carbon emissions are increasing. The evidence is now crystal clear to anyone with an unwashed brain that man-made global warming theory is sheer unadulterated bunkum. So how do the warmers react to the ever more embarrassing evidence that they have hitched their reputations to the biggest anti-scientific scam in history? By ratcheting up the hysteria to fever pitch and shrieking that their predictions about the impending irreversible environmental apocalypse have grievously underestimated the catastrophe which is going to be far, far worse. At the...

Climate Change: Washington is about to crack down on carbon dioxide emissions. It had better hurry because it won't have much time before the backlash strikes. The public is losing its faith in the global warming religion.The Environmental Protection Agency, under new management, wants to regulate emissions of CO2, as well as other greenhouse gases, as part of its campaign against global warming. The next step is to establish a reporting system, which was proposed Tuesday, so the government can monitor private activity and eventually tax carbon emissions. As many as 13,000 factories, power plants, refineries and other commercial enterprises...

Has it occurred to you that constantly telling children and teens that “global warming” is real and that the Earth is in deadly peril constitutes child abuse? That thought came to me as I enjoyed some of the excellent seminars and speeches during the March 8-10 second annual Conference on Climate Change. Here were some of the nation’s leading climatologists and others spelling out in detail precisely why there is no global warming and, indeed, why the Earth is now into a decade-old cooling trend. The experts believe that the Earth will stay in this trend for easily another decade...

Soon, “low-flow” toilets may not be the only environmental bathroom inconvenience American experience. As if there weren’t enough reasons for the public to dive head first in to hysteria of so-called manmade global warming, Americans are now being told their urinary tracts are at risk. Dr. Margaret Pearle, a urologist professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, warns that “global warming” can potentially cause an additional 2 million kidney stone cases, according to a March 1 report by the Ivanhoe Broadcast News. “We are predicting that there will be an increase in the prevalence of stone...

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials. The decision, which most likely would play out in stages over a period of months, would have a profound impact on transportation, manufacturing costs and how utilities generate power. It could accelerate the progress of energy and climate change legislation in Congress and form a basis for the United States’ negotiating position at United Nations climate talks set for December in Copenhagen. The...

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials. The decision, which most likely would play out in stages over a period of months, would have a profound impact on transportation, manufacturing costs and how utilities generate power. It could accelerate the progress of energy and climate change legislation in Congress and form a basis for the United States’ negotiating position at United Nations climate talks set for December in Copenhagen. The...

Erwin Knoll said, “Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first hand knowledge.” Most media coverage of the disastrous fires in Australia missed important information and directly or indirectly quoted environmentalists who incorrectly attributed them to global warming. It was another shameless attempt to divert attention away from the cooling trend that undermines the hypothesis that humans are causing warming. The story was also another example of how environmentalism pushed without understanding is potentially devastating. Fire tragedy highlights scale of global warming emergency and need for...

Angry residents last night accused local authorities of contributing to the Victorian bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk. During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. "We've lost two people in my...

Many of the solar parks that stretch across vast tracts of the Spanish countryside are guilty of fraud, Spain's National Energy Commission (CNE) has found. In the past two years, Spain's solar industry has grown by a spectacular 900%. The country now has the third largest solar capacity in the world, behind the United States and Germany. But an ongoing investigation by Spanish authorities has so far unearthed nearly 4,200 photovoltaic installations that were falsely registered as being online by a 30 September deadline in order to receive higher levels of subsidy from power companies. According to the CNE report,...

Last night, December 15, I attended the [local Elementary School's Christmas Production]. The children were well rehearsed, and the principle characters read their parts remarkably well. The closing number’s choreography was cute. The singing was outstanding. In my opinion, it was the worst show I have ever seen in my half century of living!I was not prepared when I was tricked into sitting through a half hour long political statement on “Global Warming.” I was not appreciative that my grand-daughter is being taught this unproven theory of mankind destroying the Earth, and that even Santa must do something to prevent...

Climate change and the inevitable extinction of the human species have been emphatically underlined by scientists studying coral reefs. But some leaders don’t listen, even though the loss of these reefs, already at 20%, constitutes a serious blow to the balance in the ecosystem that is the key to maintaining survival of the earth and the global warming that is leading to man’s extinction.

ABSTRACT: Just as the U.S. gets a new President who promises to reverse years of climate change neglect, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore at his side, American environmental experts worry that Europe's resolve on climate change is substantially weakening. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone out of her way to show herself as a climate saviour. But those times are over. Now, with heads of state and government from the European Union gathering in Brussels at the end of the week to approve the bloc's climate goals, Merkel has begun singing a different tune. She said that she...

Hostile Green Takeover: The Auto Industry Faces Environmental Thuggery Senate Floor Speech - November 20, 2008   Contacts: Matt Dempsey 202-224-9797Elizabeth French 202-224-8260 November 20, 2008 Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) – Ranking Member, Environment and Public Works Committee:   Mr. President, Americans are once again being asked to foot the bill for yet another “urgent” bailout.  In October, Congress voted for an unprecedented $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and now much of the same alarmist rhetoric is being employed to pressure members to act quickly.    The latest bailout demand making the rounds in Washington is for the Big Three auto...

Al Gore does Oprah - was anybody watching?29 11 2008 A guest post by: Russ Steele from NCWatchWe can only hope the most people in the US are shopping on Black Friday and not watching the Oprah Winfrey Show today.  Al Gore has brought his global warming propaganda machine to share with Oprah.  You can find the details on Oprah’s web page.  Here are some of the topics that Gore is pushing:Classic Gore:“Some of the leading scientists are now saying we may have as little as 10 years before we cross a kind of point-of-no-return, beyond which it’s much more difficult...

Abstract: President-elect Barack Obama said attacking global climate change is a "matter of urgency" that will create jobs as he got advice from Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue. Obama made clear he would adopt an aggressive approach to global warming when he takes over the White House on January 20. He and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met for nearly two hours with Gore at Obama's presidential transition office in Chicago. Obama hopes addressing climate change can create the kind of jobs that will help pull the U.S. economy out of a...

NBC's Ann Curry aborted her quest to find proof of global warming at the peak of Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro. But at about a half mile shy of her goal, she did find proof that sub-zero degree temperatures and thin, low oxygen concentration air might do a 52 year old woman and her crew serious harm, particularly when altitude safety rules take the back seat to ideology. For those of you who may not know, as part of last week's silly "Ends of the Earth" series, itself part of their even sillier "Green is Universal" week, the network dispatched four Today...

A B.C. man who clubbed a bear to death in self-defence is now defending himself from a smear campaign. Jim West of 70 Mile House says angry animal-rights crusaders have been harassing him at home and impersonating him in e-mails to media outlets. "I figure this is someone from PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] because I've had some people tracking me down and giving me the gears," said Mr. West, 45. "I really hate that. I hate confrontations of any kind. I try to be as polite as possible. I'm sorry, but it was simply a life-or-death...

I was traveling extensively in Europe when Reagan described the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire". I remembered all the sneers and derisive jokes about what a simpleton he was. First of all you had to believe there was a Devil and he had some influence over man. You had be Religious. What an idiot! What a moron! I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Northern California recently with my family and the topic of Evil came up in the most unexpected place. In a children's performance at the aquarium. "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". We were hoping for a skit...

I mean, if you're going to radically change the way a car is powered, you might as well radically change the way it looks too. Right? I guess that's what MDI (the company who has been pioneering, or at least attempting to pioneer, the compressed-air-powered car for the last 20 years) was thinking when they created the AirPod. I'm not getting any press releases in English, and my French is horrible. But from what I can tell, this new concept is going to roll off the production line in 2009...

The collapse of the ethanol boom continues as a Pratt-based ethanol producer is the latest to file bankruptcy. Gateway Ethanol LLC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, estimating it owes between $50 million and $100 million. The filing comes weeks after Minneapolis-based Dougherty Funding LLC sought to have Gateway placed in emergency receivership to preserve any money being returned to creditors. It moved to foreclose on the company’s plant in May, saying Gateway defaulted on a $54.3 million loan used to build the facility. In a motion field in the U.S. District Court of Kansas in September, Dougherty noted...

“Kill your air conditioner,” wrote Joe Klein in Time Magazine. “The unnecessary refrigeration of America has become a chronic disease.” What? I’m tempted to laugh at the lunacy. It’s as silly as banning the light bulb in an attempt to save the planet. Who could be that stupid? Well, in a few years incandescent light bulbs will be illegal. We’ll be forced to buy compact fluorescents, which require Hazmat disposal teams when broken. In today’s green environment, nothing is too insane. Frighteningly, our industry is increasingly considered politically incorrect. A decade ago, the New York Times reported that an Italian...

Al Gore called Wednesday for "civil disobedience" to combat the construction of coal power plants without the ability to store carbon, Reuters reported. The former vice president, whose efforts to raise awareness of global warming have made him the most prominent voice on that issue, made the comment during a session at the fourth annual Clinton Global Initiative in Manhattan.

Pamela Anderson must be floating on air right about now. As of this week, anti-meat activists have a new standard-bearer: United Nations chief climate expert and staunch vegetarian Rajendra Pachauri. On Monday, Pachauri basically put the UN seal on environmental vegetarianism when he recommended that everyone on Planet Earth begin cutting meat out of their diets to combat climate change. And vegan advocates can hardly contain their excitement. But PETA and company had better savor the flavor, because Pachauri’s rationale has already come under fire. And vegetarian groups are having a pretty tough time coming up with answers to some...

Is Al Gore nuts? I’m serious. Is it possible that the disappointment of losing the presidential campaign eight years ago destabilized him? If you think about it, since then, he’s been a changed man. First he got fat. He went through a dramatic physical change. He put on a significant amount of weight and grew a beard and got reclusive. Then he lost the weight and found a cause. Manmade global warming. It absolutely became his theme in life. After being largely silent on the issue during eight years as the vice president and a good run in the Senate,...

A whole new industry is springing up that will dwarf Al Gore's ripping off of the population through Global Warming. Companies are figuring out how to work the ridiculous "Carbon Credits" debacle to make big bucks. Rhodia, is a French Company, makes adipic acid which is a chemical used in the production of nylon. They have moved their operation to South Korea and Brazil. Why? A by-product of their manufacturing process is the creation of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is over 300 times more potent as an atmospheric warming agent than carbon dioxide. Rhodia destroys the nitrous oxide...

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...

Pictured: The floating cities that could one day house climate change refugees An architect has come up with an innovative answer to rising sea levels - a city that floats around the world. The self-contained 'Lilypad' city will be home to around 50,000 'climate refugees' from the worst hit areas - including London. {snip} The 'Lilypad' cities would be powered by renewable energy sources {snip} But now a visionary architect has found a solution which will see people in the affected cities making a new home for themselves on the futuristic-looking Lilypad. {snip} As land-based cities flood, the Lilypad will...

Evidence of serious flaws in the multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credits has been uncovered by a BBC World Service investigation. The credits are generated by a United Nations-run scheme called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The mechanism gives firms in developing countries financial incentives to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But in some cases, carbon credits are paid to projects that would have been realised without external funding. The findings reinforce doubts that the CDM is leading to real emission cuts, which is not good news for the effort to combat climate change. And in one case a company...

It's a staple of the glossy magazine: the eye-catching spread selling the latest Chelsea tractor or high-performance German road machine. But the luxury car advert looks likely to become much less attractive under green advertising rules being drafted by the EU. As a packet of cigarettes carries a mandatory health warning, a Mercedes C-class advert may be forced to carry a climate hazard alert within months. Manufacturers would be forced to stop supplying pollution information in barely readable small print at the bottom of ads. The European commission is believed to be considering a "traffic lights" system whereby red dots...

Take a look at this web page. Find out when you should DIE: http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greenhouse_calc.htm Propaganda to brain wash Australian children. A questionnaire to calculate your carbon footprint and predict how long you will/should live on the planet.

Anyone who doubts that liberalism is a death cult needs to check out the taxpayer-funded Australia Broadcasting Corporation's kiddy-oriented Greenhouse Calculator, which helps little kids calculate how soon they should die so as to stop being a burden on the planet.