Free Republic

Economic freedom, individual liberties must not be sacrificed at the altar of religious or secular dogma, that climate change is an immediate existential crisis that can only be solved by top-down dictates and controlled wealth redistribution Pope Francis issued a lengthy encyclical last week calling for radical change in human behavior to confront climate change. He presented climate change as the moral issue of our time. “Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it,” the pope declared....

The creatures hail from a rarely before explored region of the ocean's water column.Shallow waters can be easily explored by divers and the deep sea is now starting to be scanned by robotic submersibles. But there’s an in between part of the ocean where its too dark for divers to see and too shallow for bots to bother with. The area 150 to 500 feet deep is called the Twilight Zone, at the California Academy of Sciences. And recent expedition to those mysterious waters just off the coast of the Philippines revealed more than 100 new species, reports Grace Singer...

Gizmodo, as part of a series of stories about space, ran a piece on Thursday called ‘What is Stopping Us from Building Cities in Space? No, it’s not Tech.” The article attempts to examine some of the political impediments that have stymied the settlement of the high frontier. Unfortunately, the piece would have been more convincing had it not been for one rather glaring error. The piece suggested that the United States attempted to claim the moon as sovereign territory when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the American flag at Tranquility Base on July 20, 1969. “So much of...

How can Pope Francis lend himself in any activity with the man who will make the Free West the end of an era? Hard to tell which was really worse, the caricature of Pope Francis as the world’s newest superhero in the ‘Pope Francis: The Encyclical’ mock video, or the picture of him on Drudge with the wind having blown the pellegrina of his robe over his head. Some would say the picture on Drudge, which would have been seen by far more people than the video. Either way the pontiff came off as looking stupid in his role as...

Only 45 percent of all Americans -- regardless of their political leanings -- believe that the Earth is warming The Pew Research Center has released the results of a poll that examines the ideological divide over global warming in the United States. Only 45 percent of all Americans—regardless of their political leanings—believe that the Earth is warming and that the warming is caused mainly by human activity. This is a decline from 50 percent in 2006. The remaining 55 percent either don’t know whether or not the Earth is warming or what is causing the warming, don’t believe the Earth...

It is likely that the P5+1 nuke "deal" with Iran will be approved soon. Military and other nuke sites which Iran has not “disclosed” will not be inspected. Nor will Iran’s nuke ties with North Korea — which P5+1 member China seems to be helping, Iran’s massive support for terrorism and abysmal human rights record be considered because they are also deemed unnecessary for "deal" approval. Sanctions against Iran are moribund and will not be revived regardless of whether there is a “deal.” However, a bronze bust of Obama may soon be displayed prominently in Supreme Leader Khamenei’s office and one of Khamenei may soon be displayed proudly in Dear Leader Obama’s...

In a rather self-serving review article entitled “A historical perspective on the discovery of statins,” Japanese biochemist Akira Endo hits all the conventional and PC notes in his 10-page (including references) trip down memory lane. From the get-go, in the abstract itself he tells us that… “Cholesterol is essential for the functioning of all human organs, but it is nevertheless the cause of coronary heart disease. Building on that knowledge, scientists and the pharmaceutical industry have successfully developed a remarkably effective class of drugs–the statins–that lower cholesterol levels in blood and reduce the frequency of heart attacks.” We would expect...

As hemp makes a comeback in the U.S. after a decades-long ban on its cultivation, scientists are reporting that fibers from the plant can pack as much energy and power as graphene, long-touted as the model material for supercapacitors, according to David Mitlin, Ph.D. Supercapacitors are energy storage devices that have huge potential to transform the way future electronics are powered. Unlike today’s rechargeable batteries, which sip up energy over several hours, supercapacitors can charge and discharge within seconds. But they normally can’t store nearly as much energy as batteries, an important property known as energy density. One approach researchers...

The Obama administration is establishing new to limits on public land uses in 10 Western states to protect the habitat of the ground dwelling greater sage grouse. The federal efforts are an attempt to prevent a continued decline in sage grouse numbers which could necessitate listing the sage grouse as threatened or endangered. The new limits are the federal government's biggest land-planning effort to date to conserve a single species. The proposal would affect energy development. Among other actions, the regulations would require oil and gas wells to be clustered in groups of a half-dozen or more to avoid scattering...

It wasn’t the Martians’ fault their planet died. If they existed – once – Martians were likely microbes, living in a world much like our own, warmed by an atmosphere and crisscrossed by waterways. But Mars began to lose that atmosphere, perhaps because its gravity wasn’t strong enough to hold onto it after an asteroid impact, or perhaps it was gradually blown away by solar winds. The cause is still mysterious, but the ending is clear: Mars’s liquid water dried up or froze into ice caps, leaving life without its most precious resource. Any Martians would have been victims of...

Unresolved economic and social issues associated with wind turbines Touting the power of wind and “the possibilities to reshape our energy systems, decarbonize our economies and boost job growth,” the Global Wind Day is coordinated worldwide by the European Wind Energy Association, the Global Wind Energy Council, and various national associations. Solution Wind, a global awareness campaign is also publicizing the wind industry in advance of the COP21 (U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, also known as “Paris 21”) climate negotiations in Paris, November 30-Decemmber 11, 2015. The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change was one of the three documents...

Foul wind from the Vatican... Radical environmentalists have been waving ‘Save the Environment’ placards in society’s face for decades. As has long been the practice of the lib-left holier-than-thous, they climbed up on the soapbox where they continue to lecture the unwashed masses at every turn. Some time after the Peaceniks handed over their placards to them, the radical environmentalists gave up raging against pollution, which sorely needed raging against, renaming their battle the epic one against global warming, now climate change and then choosing “man-made” global warming as their chief clarion call. How activist pulses must be racing now...

In the summer of 2002, shortly before I was elected to Congress, I sat through an eye-opening meeting with representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council and several local environmental activist groups. Hoping to convince me to support various water restrictions, they argued that San Joaquin Valley farmers should stop growing alfalfa and cotton in order to save water — though they allowed that the planting of high-value crops such as almonds could continue. Then, as our discussion turned to the groups' overall vision for the San Joaquin Valley, they told me something astonishing:

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! VIDEO: ABC 7 years ago, predicting NYC would be under water in 2015 because of global warmingStuff like this never gets old, and it never stops being relevant because, remember, the global warmists tell us we must act now or else their dire predictions about the future will inevitably come true. So what do we find when we look back on some of their past predictions? The Media Research Center did just that the other day, dredging up a hilarious (although not intentionally) report by ABC titled “Earth 2015.” You have to see this. It’s just a 53-second clip...

The drama surrounding funding for NASA’s Commercial Crew program has started up once again. In the wake of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s cutting funding for the program by over $300 million, supporters have fallen back on familiar patterns of futile complaining. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden claimed that the funding shortfall would delay the restoration of American spaceflight capability by as much as two years. Bolden was mild compared to some of Commercial Crew’s supporters on the Internet.

An entire generation has grown up and graduated from college since the first lies about global warming were unleashed On Thursday and Friday, June 11-12, there will be a gathering of some of the nation’s and the world’s leading climate change “skeptics” in Washington, D.C. and joining them will be members of Congress and their staffs. The Tenth International Conference on Climate Change will occur and the odds are that the mainstream media, as it has done for all the previous conferences, will do its best to ignore it. In attendance as well will be scores of scientists, economists, and...

Scientific reality: PM2.5 does not kill anyone. The EPA's claims of PM2.5 lethality rank among the most nonsensical fraudulent and readily disprovable scientific claims ever. Chinese cities have some of the worst air pollution in the world. Two are Xi’an and Shanghai. Yet reports claim life expectancy in both these cities is higher than the US. According to a 2012 report, even though the air in Xi’an is, on average, 9-10 times more polluted in terms of PM2.5 particles than the median PM2.5 levels of the two most polluted cities in a 112 US city study (Rubidoux, CA and Los...

When will new earthquakes or volcanic eruptions occur? I doubt anyone knows the answer to that. The president of the Space and Science Research Corporation, John Casey, is also the author of “Cold Sun: A Dangerous ‘Hibernation’ of the Sun Has Begun!” and has called attention to a meteorological cycle that until the global warming hoax occurred, was largely unknown to many people and, to a large degree still is. Nature has not cooperated with the charlatans who made claims about a dramatic warming of the Earth. Since 1998 the planet along with the Sun has been in a solar...

If you thought building your own laser weapon at home was hot stuff, you haven't seen anything yet. Do-it-yourself fan Styropyro has built a laser "shotgun" whose eight 5W beams are adjustable with lenses, much like you'd adjust the choke on a conventional shotgun to narrow or widen its buckshot spread. As you might gather, 40W of combined laser power is pretty powerful -- and unbelievably dangerous. The gun can destroy everything from balloons to ping pong balls, and there are reflected beams that could easily smack someone's eye. Don't try this at home, folks. It's still an impressive feat...

This week, former Rhode Island Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee announced he is seeking the Democratic nomination for president in the 2016 election. A key factor in his decision to enter the race is “to bring the much-needed conversion of weights and measurements in this country into line with the metric system.” “The United States is seriously out of step with the rest of the world,” Chafee contended. “When everyone else is using meters and liters it is sheer arrogance for us to be using yards and gallons. It’s like we saying ‘we’re too good to lower ourselves to your...