Free Republic

Moments like the one we live in now come along from time to time, providing the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past. For instance, key takeaways from the Deepwater Horizon incident of April 2010 and how they apply to today are clear except to those who deny them. On Apr. 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion, which killed 11 men, caused the rig to sink into the deep and started a devastating oil leak from the well. Prior to it being capped three months afterward,...

The New York HEAT Act might not make the final budget. The bill reduces the state’s reliance on natural gas and cuts ratepayer costs by eliminating certain rules. It was in both legislative chambers’ one-house budgets, but last-minute scrambling could remove it. New York League of Conservation Voters Policy Director Patrick McClellan said, aside from people’s preference for natural gas, other challenges have made the bill hard to pass. “I think that there has also been some irresponsible fear-mongering against this bill from some people who oppose it,” said McClellan, “basically telling people this means that their natural gas service...

On April 17 and 18, Colorado Parks and Wildlife received reports of livestock depredation by wolves in Grand County. The agency confirmed that four cattle were killed... Four yearling cattle have been killed by a wolf or wolves in Grand County. Colorado Parks and Wildlife believes the depredation occurred between Monday night and Tuesday morning. In an email to Sky-Hi News, Parks and Wildlife officials stated that they responded to a possible livestock depredation incident on Wednesday morning and then again on Thursday morning. Both incidents occurred on the same property. On Wednesday, the agency investigated three yearling cattle that...

Caltech and JPL scientists suggest the fingerprints of early photochemistry provide a solution to the long-standing mystery. Mars is blanketed by a thin, mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere—one that is far too thin to prevent large amounts of water on the surface of the planet from subliming or evaporating. But many researchers have suggested that the planet was once shrouded in an atmosphere many times thicker than Earth's. For decades that left the question, "Where did all the carbon go?" Now a team of scientists from Caltech and JPL thinks they have a possible answer. The researchers suggest that 3.8 billion...

A recent study has found that global warming is causing apples to lose some of their crunch. The study which was published on Scientific Reports, analysed data gathered from 1970 to 2010 at two orchards in Japan and ...

Earth's changing spin is threatening to toy with our sense of time, clocks and computerized society in an unprecedented way — but only for a second. For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is rotating a tad faster than it used to. Clocks may have to skip a second — called a "negative leap second" — around 2029, a study in the journal Nature said Wednesday.

Global warming has slightly slowed the Earth’s rotation — and it could affect how we measure time. A study published Wednesday found that the melting of polar ice — an accelerating trend driven primarily by human-caused climate change — has caused the Earth to spin less quickly than it would otherwise.

A wave anomaly captured by a weather-mapping system sparked a global mystery this week—with some internet sleuths even claiming it proves the existence of aliens. A giant cluster of waves over 80 feet high and spanning 2,000 miles—an area larger than Texas—appeared to move through the ocean off the coast of Africa on April 10 in a journey that lasted about 24 hours before it vanished. Some online commentators said the formation could only have been created by something moving under the surface of the sea—making it an "unidentified submersible object," the ocean equivalent of a UFO. A graphic of...

In a far-reaching new essay in The New Atlantis, the environmental researcher Ted Nordhaus makes a damning and authoritative case that while the basic science of CO2 and climate is solid, it has been abused by the activist class in service of a wildly irresponsible and unscientific climate catastrophism. This reckless alarmism, saturated across the mainstream media and endlessly amplified by it, has had profound societal consequences. It has both distorted public understanding of the massive benefits the carbon economy makes possible and grossly exaggerated the risks of extreme events it allegedly makes more likely. As a result it has...

A team of European researchers says that hundreds of thousands of meteorites, which may provide valuable information about the dawn of life on Earth, are disappearing from Antarctica at an alarming rate. Based on their research, the scientists behind the alarming findings say that as many as three-quarters of the approximately 300,000-800,000 meteorites resting on the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet could be lost by 2050. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research says the culprit behind the wholesale disappearance is the steady rise in global temperature. “For every tenth of a degree of increase in global...

EXCLUSIVE: Biden administration officials successfully pressured fact-checking website Snopes to alter its rating on a fact check it conducted regarding a potential federal ban on gas stoves, according to internal communications. In early January 2023, Snopes issued a "mixture" rating on the claim that the Biden administration was considering a ban on gas-powered stovetops, citing comments made by a senior official overseeing product regulations. Shortly before the fact check, Richard Trumka Jr., a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), said such a ban was "on the table." "This is a hidden hazard," Trumka told Bloomberg at the time....

Earthquakes on the East Coast are rare but sea level rise and frequent flooding may lead to a higher frequency of quakes. But here's why you shouldn't be alarmed. "An earthquake is based on tectonic plates, and New York is sitting on a 'lazy' plate, which is good, meaning we do not have so many earthquakes, but there are other things that happen -- too much rain or drought," Dr. Marsellos told NBC New York. Long periods of flooding can cause water levels to rise leading to possible landslides. Those slides can "lubricate" faults and may account for a higher...

A candidate running for Senate in New Jersey was ruthlessly goaded on social media after claiming the “climate crisis” was to blame for the Friday earthquake that rocked the tri-state area. Green Party member Christina Amira Khalil shared the controversial message just minutes after the quake, which was the strongest temblor to strike near the Big Apple in 140 years. “I experienced my first earthquake in NJ. We never get earthquakes. The climate crisis is real. The weirdest experience ever,” Khalil wrote on X.

Reconstructions of paleo-CO2 levels openly rely on data derived from plant stomata. But when modern (1800s-present) CO2 measurements from stomata conflict with the narrative that humans drive CO2 levels, they are patently rejected. [emphasis, links added] Scientists readily acknowledge plant stomata evidence from one location is “widely used as an effective tool for paleoenvironmental reconstructions” of global atmospheric CO2 from 1 to 150 million years ago (Badihagh et al., 2024). For example, in a new study, 100-150 million-year-old stomata samples from Iran are shown to reconfirm that global atmospheric CO2 levels hit 1,100 to 1,700 ppm during the Jurassic period....

Norway's wolf claim unsupported Scandinavian wolf researchers say that Norwegian authorities have no scientific basis for their claim that the ongoing cull of five wolves will not threaten Norway's wolf population. Here the first of five wolves was shot in Koppang on Jan. 16. The second wolf shot was a fertile female from a protected zone, shot by mistake. Norway's claim that killing five of its roughly 20 wolves poses no danger is based on an argument that Norway and Sweden have a shared wolf population of a bit over 100 animals. Experts dispute the Norwegian standpoint, forskning.no, the web...

What if I told you that there was an actual CONSPIRACY going on? A research experiment that they kept hidden from the public because they were afraid of a backlash. Because that is exactly what has been going on. And keep reading to the end, because you will never be able to guess who has been involved in this project… From the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the San Francisco Bay, researchers from the University of Washington LAUNCHED trillions of salt particles into the atmosphere with the intent of blocking out the sunlight from earth. This is all...

Nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy have long fought to maintain control over their land and water. Oral traditions and archaeological evidence indicate the Blackfoot Indigenous peoples and their ancestors have inhabited a broad swatch of North America more than 10,000 years.A study published today in Science Advances reinforces that connection. Genetic data confirm modern Blackfoot people are closely related to those who lived on the land hundreds of years ago. The findings also suggest Blackfoot people descend from a previously unknown genetic lineage extending back roughly 18,000 years ago, when people first populated the Americas—evidence that could bolster their claims...

The Biden Regime canceled its plan to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because oil is “way too expensive.” Biden drained the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level in 40 years. Now, the Biden administration is CANCELLING their plans to refill it because oil is "way too expensive." pic.twitter.com/NYqEZ2Aosa — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 3, 2024 This comes as gas prices are once again skyrocketing. Recall that Biden drained the SPR to its lowest level in 40 years. Biden sold the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) to Europe, India and China. Joe Biden depleted the SPR to help China....

There is a lot of concern about cloudiness obscuring the sun during next Monday's total eclipse.Interestingly it turns out that such eclipse-viewing problems are increasing as the earth warms up due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.A recent study in the Journal of Climate Statistics by Professor Wade Rocston of the University of Western East New Brunswick documents a significant (23%) increasing trend in cloud-obscured solar eclipses. The origin of the increasing cloud cover is clear according the Professor Rocston. Increasing CO2 leads to global warming. Such warming results in more evaporation and the moisture content...

It’s ethnic discrimination to force Big Apple pizzerias and matzah-makers to cut the smoky pollutants from their wood- and coal-fired ovens, according to a new bill sponsored by a state lawmaker. Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo (R-Staten Island) told the Post that his proposed law would exempt businesses — some of them legendary local establishments — from a controversial city green edict that orders them to reduce such emissions by 75%. “I’m trying to stop discrimination against ethnic restaurants. These misguided laws go against businesses that cook ethnic cuisine,” Pirozzolo said. “A cop just got killed. People are getting thrown in front...