Free Republic

Monterey biologist accused of feeding whale SAN FRANCISCO ---- A marine biologist who runs popular whale-watching tours on California's Monterey Bay has been indicted for violating federal laws that protect marine mammals. Nancy Black, a marine scientist whose work has been featured on PBS, National Geographic and Animal Planet, was charged Wednesday with four violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Her attorneys countered the charges by arguing that her interactions with the creatures were legal scientific research. She was accused of feeding killer whales in 2005 during a research trip, and misleading investigators by editing video footage of her...

The idea is to eliminate these types of plastic bags and certain types of paper bags from our landfills. To do that, the city is considering charging customers for these types of bags for three years, then eventually banning them from many stores across the city... The city's draft ordinance includes an education campaign for the public throughout all of next year, For three years after, the proposal includes retailers charge customers without a Lone Star Card, a 25 cent surcharge for each plastic or paper bag.

Yesterday's global-warming debate between John Kerry and Newt Gingrich was, as the moderator put it, "advertised as a smack-down and a prizefight." But those labels were too modest for Kerry. "Welcome to our environmental version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates," the former Democratic presidential nominee told the crowd in the Russell Caucus Room. "We flipped a coin, and I picked Lincoln." But something funny happened on the way to 1858. Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker, refused to play Douglas to Kerry's Lincoln, instead positioning himself as a tree-hugging green. Before Kerry got a word in, Gingrich conceded that global warming...

<p>First she was buoyantly up in a "dangerous" People's Park tree protesting "Everything," but now she's at Highland Hospital with a broken back, ending an eight-day protest which was a protest-in-progress.</p> <p>Her last fall from the tree was her second. She fell in her second day in the tree and was caught in the arms of a friend before she hit the ground. "Moon Shadow," who was first up, last Monday, reportedly took a plunge when—out on a limb—he helped attach a protest banner.</p>

Following through on Al Gore's green authoritarianism to a level of oppression that Joseph Stalin never thought of brings us to the realm of Bolivia's socialist strongman Evo Morales, a colleague of Hugo Chavez and the Castro Bros. Thanks to the pernicious, insidious, and likeminded United Nations, his flaky pre-Columbian brand of eco-totalitarianism may be going global: Bolivia will this month [present] a draft United Nations treaty giving "Mother Earth" the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country.

Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving "Mother Earth" the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country. The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to "dominate and exploit" — to the point that the "well-being and existence of many beings" is now threatened. The wording may yet evolve, but the general structure is meant to mirror Bolivia's Law of the Rights of Mother Earth,...

The Obama administration revoked a permit on Thursday for Arch Coal Inc's (ACI.N) proposed Spruce 1 mountaintop coal mine in West Virginia, effectively shutting one of the biggest in the United States. "The proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine would use destructive and unsustainable mining practices that jeopardize the health of Appalachian communities and clean water on which they depend," said Peter Silvan, an assistant administrator for water, at the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's final ruling under the Clean Water Act came after a scientific study, a public hearing, and a review of more than 50,000 public comments, the agency...

The UK’s leading scientific body has been forced to rewrite its guide on climate change and admit that it is not known how much warmer the Earth will become. The Royal Society has updated its guide after 43 of its members complained that the previous version failed to take into account the opinion of climate change sceptics. Now the new guide, called ‘Climate change: a summary of the science’, admits that there are some ‘uncertainties’ regarding the science behind climate change. And it says that it impossible to know for sure how the Earth's climate will change in the future...

General Stanley McChrystal’s interview in Rolling Stone Magazine will do a lot to damage further President Obama’s standing among liberals and Democrats and will undermine his chances of keeping control of Congress in 2010. To conservative voters and commentators, his comments underscore doubts about Obama’s competence. To the Administration’s spokespeople, the interview shows a lack of proper subordination in the chain of command. But to the voters of the left, the key import of his comments is that the general in charge of the war in Afghanistan basically said the war is not being won, and perhaps cannot be won....

To the left, the oil spill is not an index of presidential competence or an issue in the political sphere. It is a daily gushing of poison into the Earth’s waters as a direct result of the president’s failure to stop it. They blame BP. But they already hate oil companies. And they blame Obama, too. And they are coming to dislike him. When Obama attempts to recoup this damage to his political base by pushing new legislation on the environment or by resurrecting his cap and trade legislation or by bringing criminal charges against BP or by setting up...

Two UW-Madison students woke up with a maple tree in their living room Saturday morning, then spent part of the day replanting it because they were the ones who had dragged it there in the first place. Thomas Schroeder, 21, of Menomonee Falls, and Brenton Neuharth, 21, from Eureka, S.D., were issued citations for damage to property for taking a newly planted tree out of the ground on a terrace between West Main and South Broom streets. Madison police were alerted to it by Keith and Karen Weiss, who were returning from the Dane County Farmers’ Market and noticed an...

This is awful. Nuns gone wild. The AP reports: Catholic nuns are urging Congress to pass President Barack Obama's health care plan, in an unusual public break with bishops who say it would subsidize abortion. Some 60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns Wednesday sent lawmakers a letter urging them to pass the Senate health care bill. It contains restrictions on abortion funding that the bishops say don't go far enough. The letter says that "despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions." The letter says the legislation also...

Just watch. You won't be disappointed.

When wolves were reintroduced into Idaho, Montana and Wyoming the agreement with the states, sportsmen, the Federal Government and the tree huggers was simple. 300 wolves. The prowolf people asked for 450 wolves with at least 150 and 15 breeding pairs in each state. This 50%margin, they reasoned was needed so the number wouldn’t fall below 300. It would take YEARS they argued, probably DECADES with a slow 5% population growth rate. The 450 would represent wolf repopulation recovery and then management would be returned to the states.2010 NumbersIdaho-850 + wolvesMontana-600 + wolvesWyoming-300 + wolvesWe are at 1200 wolves...

Environmental activists have blasted Harrison Ford for making "unnecessary" trips by air, following revelations he once made a jet journey to buy a cheeseburger.

Global warming's snowball fight By Dana Milbank Sunday, February 14, 2010 (For your convenience, op-ed is posted below to Body of Comment)

A new Movie is being displayed in Public schools (communist indoctrination centers.) And your children have no choice but to sit down and watch it whether you or they want to or not. Paid for by taxpayers. The new movie is called the story of stuff. It is an environmentalist and Marxist propaganda film being shown in schools all over the country. The premise: Your cell phone, Lego's, Ipod, computer, car, Styrofoam ETC is toxic and harmful and is killing you and the planet and its all being sold to you thanks to slaves in the third world! My how...

Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics Global warming might be solved with a helium balloon and a few miles of garden hose. By BRET STEPHENS Suppose for a minute—which is about 59 seconds too long, but that's for another column—that global warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species. Suppose, too, that the best solution involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, all at a cost of a single F-22 fighter jet. Good news, right? Maybe, but not if you're Al Gore or one...

The Herald newspaper says the graffiti sprayed on buildings associated with the Skotdal family is visible from Highway 522. The message appears to be a followup to last month’s sabotage at the KRKO (1380) transmitter site that toppled a whole tower. It says, in part: “MBA KRKO/Snotdol [sic] Empire. If you continue to risk killing children, mother earth and her creations, all your holdings are targets.“ This extra-long graffiti message ends this way: "Authentic ELF [Earth Liberation Front]? Ask ATF/FBI about restricted water mains. Little water, better burn. ELF.” KRKO recently turned on its new 50-kw daytime facility, a move...

Here is a video report from Poland on an Oak Tree planted in honor of Adolf Hitler that some people want to see cut down, and others want to remain as a reminder of the past. The tree controversy gives some insight into the Nazis' apparent fascination with trees, perhaps because of the ancient rituals of teutonic tree worship. It is estimated that six million Poles died at the hands of the Nazis, with three million of them being Jews. . . . . (Watch Video)

Life's not easy if you're an organic-eating, tree-hugging, SUV-eschewing, carbon-footprintless, gender-identity-indifferent, diversity-celebrating, nonjudgmental (well, except for those damn U.S. flag pins) vegan pacifist. Just ask Gerald and Helen Goode, the First Couple of PC America. They forget to check a box when adopting an African baby, and when little Ubuntu arrives, he's a white South African. They cart home free elephant dung from Barnum & Bailey for their organic garden, then remember that the circus exploits animals. They've raised their dog Che to be a vegan, but the neighborhood sure has a lot of missing squirrels. Welcome to The Goode...

WHAT is your carbon legacy - not the emissions you are personally liable for, but those of your descendants? Ask Paul Murtaugh, a statistician at Oregon State University in Corvallis.If you have a child, he says, you and you partner are each responsible for half its emissions. If that child has kids, one-quarter of their emissions are down to you, and so on. How it adds up depends on population trends and emission changes in the future.Murtaugh used UN population projections, which say that after 2050, birth rates in all countries will be 1.85 children per woman, on average....

Jack Bauer Now Uses Recycled Weapons Fox will announce today that thriller "24" is going green. Whether Kiefer Sutherland, who plays agent Jack Bauer, will start slamming terrorist suspects' heads into tables made from salvaged pine beams, or making close call getaways in helicopters fueled by leftover french fry oil, is unclear. But according to a New York Times article yesterday, the network has stepped things up to become the first "carbon neutral show." Fox has "hired consultants to measure the carbon-dioxide output from the production, started using 20 percent biodiesel fuel in trucks and generators, installed motion monitors in...

HOULTON, Maine — James Hogan was a logger at Louisiana Pacific Corp. for 21 years when he was first laid off in 2004. He spent four years scrounging odd jobs and selling personal property to keep solvent before getting hired as a woodloader at Treeline Inc. of Lincoln in July 2008. The 46-year-old town man had almost recovered from that financial disaster, clearing $600 for a 55-hour workweek, when Treeline laid him off on Jan. 28. Since then, Hogan has searched for logging work from Fort Fairfield to Bangor without success.

Actress Ashley Judd says a wolf management program backed by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is "incredibly savage ... it's not right, it's not appropriate, it makes no sense on any level." Appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live," Judd repeated her criticism of a program that allows hunters firing from aircraft to shoot wolves to thin the numbers of the animals. Judd recently appeared in a video for the Washington-based Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, which also opposes the Palin-backed aerial hunting program. Referring to the former Republican vice presidential candidate by name in the video, Judd says that Palin is...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Five months after suing to keep polar bears off the U.S. threatened species list, Alaska's government said Wednesday it plans to issue a similar challenge to block federal protections for a struggling population of beluga whales in Cook Inlet, a mature oil-producing basin. Former vice presidential hopeful Gov. Sarah Palin said the energy-rich state believes the Endangered Species Act protections for belugas announced in October by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are unwarranted.

Berkeley’s latest tree-sit ended almost before it began when the lone remaining branch-percher descended to earth Tuesday morning, followed by two acacias a few hours later. Campus community relations director Irene Hegarty said that only one of the two tree-sitters who took to the branches was still aloft when community members talked him down. “He walked away, though he was cited and released for trespassing by university police a couple of blocks away,” she said. Arborists made short work of the trees, leaving five or six five-foot logs and a pile of wood chips for use at the park. “They...

I usually post videos in the DUmmie FUnnies on weekends or late at night. However, for this VIDEO I have to make an exception because it is probably the FUnniest video I have ever seen on YouTube. It shows a bunch of tree huggers who belong to the Earth First eco group in the North Carolina forest (most likely these are hippies who live in Asheville) mourning over trees. And they don't just shed a few tears. They are flat out bawling. Their Drama Queen antics are absolutely hilarious! And that hippie chick waxing poetic over a rock is...

Four tree-sitters began climbing down from an 80-foot-tall redwood tree near Memorial Stadium this afternoon after UC Berkeley officials agreed to create a committee that will oversee future campus development, a spokesman for the protesters said. UC officials declined to comment on the reported deal, saying they will speak after the nearly 2-year-long standoff ends. But protesters atop the tree pumped their fists in a show of victory. Before climbing down, one of the protesters, nicknamed Huck, shouted, "We love you" to cheering supporters below. The protesters' deal with the university does not include amnesty from criminal charges, said their...

BERKELEY - Crews began cutting down trees next to Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley late Friday, 21 months after activists climbed into the trees to protest the university's plan to raze them to build a $140 million sports training center center. Work crews with chainsaws and bulldozers arrived at the university grove Friday and by 4 p.m. six trees had been chopped down. Clad in black ski masks, the four remaining tree protesters who were driven into a single redwood several months ago, remained in the tree Friday and at times sparred with arborists, tossing a bottle and branches toward...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - A federal judge has overturned a decision by the U.S. Forest Service to allow oil and gas drilling near a forest and a river in Michigan's northern Lower Peninsula. ADVERTISEMENT U.S. District Judge David Lawson of Detroit ruled Thursday the agency had acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" in 2005 by giving Savoy Energy LP of Traverse City a permit to drill an exploratory well near the Au Sable River's south branch. (cont...)

About 25 University of California, Berkeley, police officers and a cherry-picker have converged at the Berkeley Oak Grove, where five climbers are being threatened and may have to come down today, according to Save the Oaks spokesman Doug Buckwald. Buckwald said he began receiving calls on an emergency phone network from climbers who "have sent word by cell phone their belief that this is it - they are coming in to get them right now." Protesters have been in the trees since UC regents voted in December 2006 to approve a plan to build a sports training center and other...

Carbon Cult sickos are under fire for an interactive website that tells children they should die because they emit CO2. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Planet Slayer" site invites young children to take a "greenhouse gas quiz", asking them "how big a pig are you?". At the end of the quiz, the pig explodes, and ABC tells children at "what age you should die at so you don’t use more than your fair share of Earth’s resources!" It's one of a number of interactive features that "Get the dirt on greenhouse without the guilt trips. No lectures. No multinational-bashing (well, maybe...

How did your Earth Hour go? My husband and I enjoyed it so much, we want to try to do it weekly.

Sen. John McCain and his staff have been adamant for days that his upcoming overseas trip to Britain, France and Israel is not political. /snip ...Apparently, though, there will still be room for fundraising. McCain's campaign has sent out an invitation for a March 20 luncheon at Spencer House -- the neo-classical home built for an ancestor of Diana, the late Princess of Wales -- "by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon. Nathaniel Rothschild." The price to attend is $1000 to $2,300. And the dress code for the event? "Lounge suits" -- British for business...

BERKELEY - Two men climbed into trees at the University of California, Berkeley oak grove this morning and tossed down supplies used by tree sitters, a grove spokesman said early Tuesday. The tree sitters themselves had not been removed by 8 a.m. Doug Buckwald, who has been involved with the tree sit since it started in December 2006, said two men climbed into an oak tree and a redwood tree and tossed food, water and other supplies used by tree sitters onto the ground. It was not immediately clear if ropes and pullies were being cut as well. The tree...

Open borders + campaign finance hypocrisy + eco-radicalism = McCain’s billionaire national finance co-chair Jerry Perenchio By Michelle Malkin • January 28, 2008 09:50 AM Scroll down for updates…meanwhile: “Romney, McCain call each other ‘liberal’… 1peren003.jpg Meet Jerry Perenchio. He’s a National Finance Co-Chair of the McCain 2008 campaign and the billionaire founder of Spanish-language media conglomerate, Univision. He also heads up a charitable foundation that has showered gobs of money on extremist green lobbying groups. Take open-borders zeal, add campaign finance hypocrisy, mix with eco-radicalism, and presto: The perfect, multiculti-profiteering McCain money buddy. Here’s his official bio on the...

The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged, calling for large — if still unquantified — national sacrifices and for a transformation in the way the country produces and uses energy. The Republicans do not go much further than conceding that climate change could be a problem and, with the notable exception of John McCain, offer no comprehensive solutions. In 2000, when Al Gore could have made warming a signature issue in his presidential campaign, his advisers persuaded him that it was too complicated and...

Critics have long believed environmentalists were planning global domination. The problem with making a credible case against such an ambitious plan was simple: no environmental leader had published one. Yet conflicts over global warming, world trade, multinational corporations, population control, sustainable futures, and transnational government left little doubt that environmentalists in fact shared the unspoken aim of wielding supreme power over a green future. But there was no proof. For years, critics, lacking hard evidence, were reduced to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of suspicious environmentalist actions - funding from huge charitable trusts, ties to the broader "progressive" community, and...

A cold, abrupt end to a honeymoon By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer Encinitas couple that fled Witch Creek fire returns home after cruise ship sinks off Antarctica ENCINITAS -- Three times since marrying June 11 in a beachside ceremony at La Jolla Cove, Trevor Takayama and Torrey Trust have dodged disaster. In August, the Encinitas couple fled an approaching hurricane while camping in a Costa Rican rain forest, on a summerlong honeymoon tour of Central and South America. In October, the Witch Creek fire forced the newlyweds to evacuate the hilltop three-bedroom home she grew up in, near Manchester...

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/11/who-is-the-gree.html

BERKELEY, Calif. -- On Sunday evening a Memorial Oak Grove tree-sitter fell from the supply-line that is used to ferry food, water and people into and out of the tree-sit protest. The traverse-line was created after the university erected a fence around the tree-sitters and spans from a tree inside the fenced in area to a tree outside the fence. Nathaniel Hill, the fallen tree-sitter, was moving on the traverse line to meet his father, Carl Hill, who had come from the east coast to visit his son. Hill was taken to Highland Hospital where he was treated for a...

The growth in human population and rising consumption have exceeded the planet's ability to support us, argues John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he says it is time to ring the alarm bells and take radical action in order to avert unspeakable consequences. We humans face two problems of desperate importance. The first is our global ecological plight. The second is our difficulty acknowledging the first. Despite increasing climate change coverage, environmental writers remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we've created. Many fear sounding alarmist, but there is an alarm to sound...

# BERKELEY: Anyone who won't come down from perch faces fine and five days in jailAnyone living in a tree outside Memorial Stadium must come down from his perch or face a $1,000 fine and five days in jail, an Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled Monday. Judge Richard Keller has broadened an earlier preliminary injunction that evicted David Galloway, 36 -- the only tree sitter previously known to UC Berkeley officials by name -- to include "all other persons acting in concert or participating with (the tree sitters)," according to his ruling. "This latest ruling makes it all but...

A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors. For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus." I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere...

I am occasionally asked why it is that so many Europeans display reflexive anti-Americanism, and I force myself to choose from a salad of possible answers. One of these is the resentment that I can remember feeling myself when I lived in England in the 1970s: the sheer brute fact that American voters who knew nothing about Europe (and cared less) could pick a president who had more clout than any of our elected prime ministers could exert. America could change our economic climate by means of the Federal Reserve, could use bases in Britain to forward its policies in...

If you're wondering who's largely to blame for the alleged heating up of the climate you need look no further than Jane Fonda. That's what "Freakanomics" columnists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt suggest in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. "If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?" the authors ask. According to Editor & Publisher, the two cite Fonda's anti-nuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in...

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated. Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004...

Former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney said Tuesday that black voters should consider voting for third-party candidates. Speaking to a sparsely attended Green Party gathering, the Georgia Democrat railed at her party and said black voters should not automatically vote Democratic, as an overwhelming majority now do. "We have to be willing to do something that we've never done before so that we can get some things we've never had before," said McKinney, who is black. During the 2000 presidential election, McKinney said, Democrats "didn't even fight for your right to vote and your right to representation," referring to allegations that...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A group of campers tied a peeping Tom suspect to a tree, keeping him bound until police arrived. Richard H. Berkey, 63, was charged with private indecency, a misdemeanor, by sheriff's deputies who were called to the Big Fan Campground near Bagby Hot Springs last weekend, according to Clackamas County Detective Jim Strovink. Campers told deputies they recognized Berkey from a similar incident at the campground last year and wanted to make sure he didn't get away. The 2006 incident was reported to police but did not result in charges. "Last year, we took down his...