Free Republic

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emphasized need to ‘transform our energy system’ but did not discuss how to pursue it. A star-studded progressive town hall on climate change drew thousands of viewers online and hundreds in person - but offered little insight into how the US left might overcome Republican opposition and lay the groundwork to limit rising temperatures. The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, and Democratic socialist congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned on a “Green New Deal”, elicited cheers with promises of an economic boom from massive investment in renewable power. “What we are trying...

Eskom’s warning that the country was threatened by months of rotating blackouts became a reality in less than 24 hours. The state-owned company, which produces most of South Africa’s power, said on Wednesday that controlled blackouts could return and last throughout the year. Even more concerning is that the company expects energy availability of the system will keep declining into early next year and probably only recover to current levels in six months. By Thursday, Eskom announced it was cutting 1GW from the grid. It doubled that amount on Friday in an outage that’s scheduled to last 13 hours. For...

Forest fires in California this year released carbon emissions equivalent to the amount produced to power the state's electricity for one year, according to a new analysis from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The wildfires, including last month's record-breaking fires in Northern and Southern California, released 68 million tons of carbon dioxide as they incinerated huge swaths of land and destroyed thousands of homes this year. That is roughly the same amount of carbon emissions typically produced to power the entire state for a year, according to a statement from the Interior Department on Friday. "We know that wildfires can...

President Trump has become “the face of climate denial,” global warming activist and former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday night, telling The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah that the 2020 election will provide the opportunity for voters to “make a statement — that we want to get back on the track to the real America.” After Noah had some fun with Trump’s comment, during a recent Washington Post interview, that U.S. air and water were “at a record clean,” Gore turned serious. “It’s really significant, Trevor, that Donald J. Trump is now the face of climate denial,” he said. “His...

LA CRETE, Alberta—The farm belt is marching northward. Upper Alberta is bitter cold much of the year, and remote. Not much grows other than the spruce and poplar that spread out a hundred miles around Highway 88 north toward La Crete. Signs warn drivers to watch for moose and make sure their gas tanks are filled. Farms have produced mostly wheat, canola and barley. Summers were so short farmer Dicky Driedger used to tease his wife about wasting garden space growing corn. Today, Mr. Driedger is the one growing corn. So are many other northern-Alberta farmers who are plowing up...

Protesters have scaled the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris, as clashed with riot police continued during a third weekend of "yellow vest" rallies. Police fired tear gas, stun grenades and water cannon on the Champs-Elysees, while masked protesters hurled projectiles and set buildings on fire. At least 110 people were injured, including 17 members of the security forces, and 270 arrests were made. Protests over fuel tax have grown into general anger at higher living costs. President Emmanuel Macron says his fuel policies are needed to combat global warming. One person was in a critical condition after protesters pulled...

Leaders of the Group of 20 (G-20) nations on Saturday signed off on a final statement pledging to fix the world trading system, with all but President Trump also expressing support for the Paris climate agreement. The statement finalized after the two-day summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, calls for reforming the World Trade Organization but does not mention protectionism because the U.S. resisted those discussions, according to The Associated Press.

A mild winter could be in store for much of the United States this winter according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. In the U.S. Winter Outlook for December through February, above-average temperatures are most likely across the northern and western U.S., Alaska and Hawaii. Additionally, El Nino has a 70 to 75 percent chance of developing. “We expect El Nino to be in place in late fall to early winter,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “Although a weak El Nino is expected, it may still influence the winter season by bringing wetter conditions across the...

**SNIP** Here are the 15 House Democrats supporting the measure: Jared Huffman (CA-02) Ro Khanna (CA-17) Ted Lieu (CA-33) John Lewis (GA-05) Joe Neguse (CO-02) Chellie Pingree (ME-01) Jamie Raskin (MD-08) Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) Rashida Tlaib (MI-13) Ilhan Omar (MN-05) Deb Halland (NM-01) Carolyn Maloney (NY-12) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) José E. Serrano (NY-15) Earl Blumenauer (OR-03) The proposal also has the support of nearly 100 environmental, economic and social justice organizations, according to the Sunrise Movement. To build momentum, the youth climate group is organizing another mass action at the Capitol on Dec. 10, right before Congress breaks for the...

Brazil's New Top Diplomat: Climate Change is a Marxist Hoax By Michael W. Chapman | November 28, 2018 | 3:23 PM EST Brazil's new, incoming foreign minister, Ernesto Araujo. (YouTube) Brazil's newly appointed foreign minister, Ernesto Frago Araujo, who starts his new job in January under President Jair Bolsonaro, has stated that the climate change issue was invented by "cultural Marxists" to help push a globalist agenda that is anti-growth and anti-Christian, reported The Guardian and the Daily Mail.  The Bolsonaro administration will take over Brazil's government on January 1, 2019. Bolsonaro selected Araujo to be minister of foreign affairs on...

Video LinkThis is good stuff. Here's the blurb at Youtube...Dr. Patrick Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, provides insight into the debate over climate change and the political games played to create policy.

President Donald Trump has moved steadily to dismantle Obama administration efforts to rein in coal, oil and gas emissions, even as warnings grow — from his own administration and others — about the devastating impact of climate change on the U.S. economy as well as the Earth. Trump has dismissed his administration's warnings about the impact of climate change, including a forecast released Friday that it could lead to economic losses of hundreds of billions of dollars a year by the end of the century.

CNN anchor Jim Sciutto issued a stark warning on Wednesday morning against the effects of climate change, stating during a newscast that "we don't want to be slowly burned to death." “I just want to ask the question for folks at home, folks like us. We got kids. We don’t want to be slowly burned to death on our own planet here," said Sciutto, who served in the Obama State Department prior to coming to CNN. "Is the human race running - in the simplest terms running out of time to take the measures necessary to rein in this rise...

Here is a very simple question for all of you upset over the fact that I do not believe in Climate Change: How many scientific doomsday prophecies do I have to see debunked before I am allowed to be skeptical of the next one? How many? Give me a number. How about if I give you a number: Thirteen. Thirteen, y’all. I am on the dark side of 52 now, which is not young, but it also isn’t old. And yet, I have lived to see so many media and scientifically-driven end-of-the-world predictions collapse under the weight of reality, I...

What is it with the modern left and the mainstream media that makes them so enamored with predictions of the coming apocalypse? Perhaps it is thanks to the old rule of journalism that bad news sells newspapers. The media has broadcast far and wide the latest primal scream by the federal government and hundreds of scientists that all life on earth by the end of the century could be severely threatened due to climate change. Chicago could turn into Phoenix and its desert conditions. Economic losses will eventually total trillions of dollars. Early death, food shortages, and pestilence will become...

... The new U.S. report, as well as a United Nations report issued in October, instead aim at frightening the public—exactly the approach that so manifestly has failed to move the needle for 35 years. Maybe it’s because voters are skeptical of doom-mongering. Maybe they have grown fatalistic about climate change. Or maybe, reflecting the folly of climate campaigners, they’ve gotten a message that acting on greenhouse gases requires giving up prosperity. Reporting Sunday on the French fuel-tax demonstrations, the New York Times noted: “Many in the crowd said that they did not disdain the government’s environmental goals, but that...

"We have to worry about the end of the month....12 times a year" "Yellow Jacket" Protester In France Explains That While Others May Worry About "The End Of The World" The Protesters Have More Immediate Worries They say that "pro-business" French President Emmanuel Macron is out of touch with the "little people" with his massive increases in fuel taxes that burden the average people. Taxes that are imposed in the name of "going green". Today Macron was saying the taxes need to be fairer, but he was insisting that they must go forward. The French fuel taxes and taxes imposed...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released its new report on climate change. It details a very, very scary future if we don’t start to curb climate change now. If you’re not concerned yet, you should be. In the scorching reality of climate change, Utahns need to face the harrowing fact that it’s only going to get worse from here, but that this doesn’t have to be the end of us. The main story doesn’t change. The rapid and excessive use of fossil fuels pollutes our air, which contributes to the Greenhouse Effect, which warms the air, which changes...

Headlines warned of economic doom after the U.S. government released its fourth National Climate Assessment last week. Yet a close reading of the report shows that the overall economic impact of human-caused climate change is expected to be quite small. Projecting human-caused changes in the global climate is a major scientific challenge; estimates of the temperature increases due to rising greenhouse-gas concentrations are uncertain by a factor of three. Trying to make projections for a particular region—such as the contiguous U.S., which comprises only 1.6% of the globe’s surface—compounds the uncertainty. Estimates of the economic impact are less certain still,...

The Trump administration is, it goes without saying, deeply anti-science. In fact, it’s anti-objective reality. But its control of the government remains limited; it didn’t extend far enough to prevent the release of the latest National Climate Assessment, which details current and expected future impacts of global warming on the United States. True, the report was released on Black Friday, clearly in the hope that it would get lost in the shuffle. The good news is that the ploy didn’t work. The assessment basically confirms, with a great deal of additional detail, what anyone following climate science already knew: Climate...