Free Republic

Katowice, Poland (CNN)The American delegation came to promote coal. And the kids laughed in their faces. That was the bizarre and symbolic scene that unfolded Monday at the UN COP24 climate talks at a spaceship-shaped conference center in Polish coal country. The nations of the world are meeting here to hash out a "rulebook" to help ensure the viability of humanity -- preventing runaway global warming from causing even greater calamity in the form of superstorms, searing droughts and deadly heat waves. That work, which follows up on the 2015 Paris Agreement, is seen as more critical now than ever....

The United States became a net oil exporter last week for the first time in almost 75 years, a significant step toward achieving “energy independence and dominance,” as promoted by President Donald Trump. The United States had been a net oil importer since 1949. In the last week of November, however, weekly U.S. net imports of crude oil and petroleum products fell to minus 211,000 barrels per day (bpd), meaning the country became a net exporter of that amount, according to data from U.S. Energy Information and Administration. The news came on the back of a surge in crude exports...

The United States joined a controversial proposal by Saudi Arabia and Russia this weekend to weaken a reference to a key report on the severity of global warming, sharpening battle lines at the global climate summit in Poland aimed at gaining consensus over how to combat rising temperatures. Arguments erupted Saturday night before a United Nations working group focused on science and technology, where the United States teamed with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to challenge language that would have welcomed the findings of the landmark report, which said that the world has barely 10 years to cut carbon emissions...

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...

The unwritten rule seems to be that each successive climate report and news release must be more frightening than any predecessors, especially during the run-up to international conferences. Thus Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report 15 claims governments worldwide must make “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” spend $40 trillion by 2035 on renewable energy, and impose carbon taxes that climb to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2030. Or temperatures could climb another 1 degree F (0.5 C) and bring utter cataclysm to human civilization and our planet. Not to be outdone, the 1,700-page 2018 US National...

Former President Barack Obama recently continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, President Donald Trump. Obama's charges are paradoxical. On one hand, Obama seems to believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current economic boom and the emergence of the United States as the world's largest energy producer. But Obama also has charged that Trump's policies are pernicious and failing. Apparently, Obama believes that all of Trump's successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump's setbacks are his own. Obama certainly forgets the old rule: Presidents, fairly or not, get both credit and...

PARIS - France hunkered down for another wave of potentially violent protests on Saturday as embattled President Emmanuel Macron planned to address the nation next week over public fury at the high cost of living, senior allies said. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said the three-week-old “yellow vest” revolt had “created a monster” and vowed police would have no tolerance for violence, with much of Paris in lockdown and tens of thousands of police deployed nationwide. Castaner warned that radicals would likely again infiltrate the protest movement - a backlash against high living costs but also, increasingly, a revolt against Macron...

This is terrific news for American workers and consumers… Unless, of course, Democrats ever regain control of government. Science Daily reported: Today, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin province contain an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. “Christmas...

The federal government has discovered a massive new reserve of oil and natural gas in Texas and New Mexico that it says has the “largest continuous oil and gas resource potential ever assessed.” “Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said of the new reserve, which is believed to have enough energy to fuel the U.S. for nearly seven years. In all, the new reserve is said to contain 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 46.3 billion barrels of oil, and 20 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids, the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological...

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission survived his confirmation vote Thursday, returning a GOP majority to the powerful federal agency. Bernard McNamee — Trump’s pick to become a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — won confirmation by a 50-49 vote. The razor-thin margin fell along party lines, with Democrats sharply opposed to his nomination. The vote brings an end to what became a contentious candidacy for McNamee. Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee initially took umbrage with his past work in the Department of Energy, where he led an unsuccessful effort...

PARIS - French authorities will close dozens of museums, tourism sites and shops on Saturday, including the Eiffel Tower and Louvre, fearing a recurrence of last week’s violence in Paris, officials said on Thursday. “We cannot take the risk when we know the threat,” Culture Minister Franck Riester told RTL radio, adding that far-right and far-left agitators were planning to hijack rallies by “yellow vest” protesters in Paris. He said the Louvre museum, Orsay museum, the two operas, and the Grand Palais were among the sites that would be closed a week after rioters looted and defaced the Arc de...

Arnold Schwarzenegger took a page out of his “Terminator” playbook this week while reflecting on the world’s “biggest evil” — fossil fuels. The actor told attendees at a United Nations climate conference in Poland on Monday that billions of people around the globe would have benefited without the early adoption of coal and other fossil fuels for energy. ~snip~ The actor and former California governor added that President Trump is “meshugge” (Yiddish for “crazy”) for abandoning a 2015 climate change agreement as part of his “America First” campaign vow.

Increasing number of people are fed up with their green overlords For decades now, working people, tax payers and retirees have been battered by the Green elites who shelter in well-paid tax havens like the UN and Greenpeace. These Green elites have been supported by fellow travellers like the Clintons, Obama and Hollywood in America; Merkel in Germany; David Cameron, Prince Charles, David Attenborough and the BBC in UK; Macron in France; Gillard, Turnbull, Flannery and the ABC in Australia; the Trudeau dynasty in Canada; plus ranks of pious clerics, scheming oil sheiks, green energy speculators and guilt-stricken big business...

PARIS — "Yellow Jacket" protesters blocking access to 11 fuel depots belonging to one of the world's biggest oil companies have left gas stations running dry in France. At least 75 of the company's 2,200 gas stations were out of fuel, a spokesman for energy giant Total said Monday. For more than two weeks, protesters angry over gas taxes and the high cost of living have been blocking roads across France, impeding access to fuel depots, shopping malls and some airports. Riot police were overrun on Saturday as protesters brought chaos to Paris' fanciest neighborhoods, torching dozens of cars, looting...

Concerned that President Trump “might unjustly be credited with the country’s current energy boom” former President Obama hastened to point out to voters that “none of what we are seeing today would’ve been possible if not for the actions taken during my administration.” “For eight years my administration did everything it could to suppress energy production in the United States,” Obama pointed out. “We blocked coal production. We discouraged fracking. We denied drilling permits wherever we could. We prevented pipeline and refinery construction. When I left office, gasoline was nearly $4 per gallon. The energy sector was languishing under our...

Qatar will withdraw from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Qatar's Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi announced on Monday. The decision to quit the bloc of 15 oil-producing countries that account for almost half of the world's oil production was confirmed by Qatar Petroleum, the country's state oil company.

... hikes Macron is imposing thanks to the #ParisAgreement. It's almost like they don't want people to know the truth. cc: @brianstelter The thing is, oil prices have been falling for more than a month. So why would @CNN report the opposite in regards to the Paris riots? cc: @brianstelter ...Very weirdly written. You can’t trust anything CNN reports anymore, always twisted to push their narrative. They even pondered why people weren’t blaming OPEC or Trump. ...See, the problem here is that everyone still thinks this is about gas taxes.. No MSM will report on it because they're protesting Macron's...

Violent protests ravaged Paris, France on Saturday when French citizens became upset about rising taxes and the high cost of living, USA Today reported. According to police, 133 were injured and 412 were arrested. This isn't the first time violent protests hit the capital. In fact, this is the third straight weekend that violence has taken place in Paris. The violence initially began on Nov. 17th when a gas tax increase was announced. The riots that took place this weekend, however, have been considered to be the worst one in a generation.French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday visited the Arc de...

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday reportedly insisted that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman include international experts as part of an ongoing investigation into the death of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A French official said the two leaders discussed Khashoggi’s murder during a five-minute exchange that took place on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Argentina, where they also talked about the need to find a solution to the situation in Yemen, Reuters reported. The Saudi Gazette newspaper shared a clip of the brief exchange. In one part of the clip, the crown prince can be heard telling...

We knew (or at least feared) that this was coming, but Friday saw the finalization of the new biofuels – specifically ethanol – blending requirements for 2019 and 2020. And true to the promises that President Trump made to Iowa politicians, we did not see any significant reductions in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandates. In fact, they went up, much the same as under Obama’s EPA. (EPA website)