Free Republic

Democrat Climate Change Cult: Ban Everything! Ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) nations have agreed to eliminate all coal-fired power plants by 2035. The countries that are members of the Group of Seven (G7) are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union. This declaration was made by Andrew Bowie, a UK minister at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, during an interview in Turing, Italy. “We do have an agreement to phase out coal in the first half of the 2030s,” Bowie said. “This is, by...

Poland’s top climate official said the country is preparing to set a date for a complete phase-out of coal-fired power generation, just months after the nation elected a new government that has pledged to support environmental policies of the European Union (EU). ... Poland, which currently receives about 70% of its electricity from burning coal, and has long been Europe’s largest producer of the fuel, has been slowly increasing its use of solar and wind power. ... Urszula Zielinska, the country’s Secretary of State for Climate, during a meeting in Brussels, Belgium on Jan. 15, said, “Only with an end...

KEY TAKEAWAYS Biden’s unprecedented freezing of U.S. dollars owned by a foreign central bank has fundamentally jeopardized the currency’s hard-won reserve status. Janet Yellen dropped a bombshell last year, casually admitting that not only is de-dollarization happening, but Americans should expect more. At a minimum, it’d be multiple years of double-digit inflation like we’re used to seeing in third world countries. At worst, it’d be a full-blown Weimar Republic. America’s political establishment has less respect for the U.S. dollar than our foreign adversaries. That was made clear when Tucker Carlson recently interviewed the Russian strongman President Vladimir Putin, who clearly...

CHICAGO (KABC) -- Tesla drivers are struggling to charge their vehicles in the Chicago-area, as many charging stations are not working amid the freezing cold weather. At the charging station near 95th Street and Western Avenue in the Evergreen Park area, many Tesla owners were stranded with dead batteries from the cold. Drivers said there were not enough working chargers at that location. "Our batteries are so cold it's taking longer to charge now, so it should take 45 minutes, it's taking two hours for the one charger that we have," said Brandon Welbourne, a Tesla owner. "I have seen...

Desperate Tesla owners in and around Chicago were seen trying to charge their vehicles with no luck amid frigid temperatures that have gripped the Midwest. Charging stations have essentially turned into car graveyards in recent days as temperatures have dropped to the negative double digits, Fox Chicago reported. "Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent," Tyler Beard, who had been trying to recharge his Tesla at an Oak Brook, Illinois Tesla supercharging station since Sunday afternoon, told the news outlet. "And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday."

Travel was halted across Europe Saturday as heavy snow blanketed cities and freezing temperatures set in following a week of deadly early-season storms. Flights were grounded in Munich and Dublin Saturday after a winter storm dumped snow across southern Germany and parts of Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, disrupting travel across the continent.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that he has “completely recovered” after a pair of freezing incidents over the summer that raised questions about his health and ability to lead the Republican conference. “I’m fine. I’m completely recovered, and I’m just fine,” the 81-year-old told CBS “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan. “I’m in good shape, completely recovered, and back on the job.” McConnell’s remarks came less than two months after his most recent incident when he froze while answering questions from reporters in his home state. The prior freeze happened while speaking in the Capitol a month...

Authorities say 12 people have been found dead so far following the historic storms that buried the San Bernardino Mountains under several feet of snow, covering homes and paralyzing travel. “So far, we can only confirm (one), a traffic accident, as weather-related,” San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Mara Rodriguez said Wednesday. “The preliminary information in the other deaths does not indicate they are weather-related, but those investigations are ongoing.” “There’s going to be a lot more,” said Megan Vazquez, a volunteer. “It’s been very cold here. It’s been below freezing, so if somebody didn’t have electricity or gas to...

Can supercooled running water freeze due to a pressure change? Thursday I spent almost all day prepping for our "Arctic blast" that rolled in late in the afternoon. (Most impressive!) Among many other things, I checked to make sure the small thermostatically controlled heating element under our water tank was plugged in. (The wellhouse is part of but outside our house proper.) I ended up getting to sleep around 2 am -- exhausted & filthy I just crashed out on the carpet in the LR. (With all my warm clothes on it was quite comfy.) I woke up ~8 am:...

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening-- the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast. One slipper was nowhere to...

Canada has moved to make the asset freezing part of its Emergencies Act, which was used to target supporters of the Freedom Convoy protests, a permanent fixture.Wow, who saw that one coming?In order to stop what the Trudeau regime referred to as “illegal blockades,” the government threatened to freeze the bank accounts of demonstrators and anyone who donated money to them.Under the Emergencies Act, bank are required to freeze accounts without a court order, while all crowdfunding platforms and payment providers are mandated to provide information to FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada).Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland...

How close would a solar and wind-dependent power grid have come to giving us the electricity we needed during the three-week freeze in Alberta where the average temperature was -22 C from Dec. 15 to Jan. 9?... Alberta needs a supply of about 10,500 MW (megawatts) on average, said Mackay. If they are running at maximum capacity, solar can provide 736 MW and wind 2,269 MW.... If we had been reliant on far more solar and wind, how would we have done? “You’d have to start with rolling blackouts or brownouts,” Mackay said. “If we lost the bulk of our...

A Florida man was charged Thursday with human smuggling after the bodies of four people, including a baby and a teen, were found in Canada near the U.S. border in what authorities believe was a failed crossing attempt during a freezing blizzard. The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota said Steve Shand, 47, has been charged with human smuggling after seven Indian nationals were found in the U.S. and the discovery of the bodies. Court documents filed Wednesday in support of Shand’s arrest allege one of the people spent a significant amount of money to come to...

France shuts down nuclear plants - gas and power prices shatter records During routine maintenance, Electricite de France (OTCPK:ECIFF) ("EDF") found pipe defects on the safety injection systems for two nuclear facilities; both are shut down awaiting repair. As a result of the outages, EDF has revised 2021 annual EBITDA guidance from "more than 17.7b euros" to "17.5b - 18.0b euros." With yet another source of energy offline, European natural gas for January delivery continues its relentless march higher; prices now reaching $44 / mmbtu, Europeans will pay 900% more for natural gas in January 2022 than January 2021. In...

Europe's first cold spell of the heating season has arrived, pressuring power prices higher as freezing temperatures ushers in increased power demand to heat building structures across the central-west region. German day-ahead power prices jumped to the second-highest level ever, 273.89 euros per megawatt-hour. Day-ahead power prices are also higher in France and Netherlands. The Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), the German Meteorological Service, released a weather note on Tuesday warning of frigid and snowy weather.

On Thursday, one of the world’s largest oil companies — Royal Dutch Shell — confirmed it will never again produce as much oil as it did in 2019. Peak oil production at Shell, said CEO Ben van Beurden, has come and gone. Pandemic or no, and no matter who is in the White House, the oil business is entering an exciting, scary new frontier — and there’s no turning back. The sooner Houston, the oil and gas capital of America, embraces that reality, the better its prospects, and those of its energy industry workforce, will be. By now, the link...

The FBI has joined a criminal investigation of what police said appears to be an "intentional attack" on gas service lines in Aspen, Colorado, that left thousands of residents and businesses without heat as temperatures in the skiing mecca plunged to near zero degrees. Work crews are scrambling to restore gas service, and local authorities handed out electric space heaters to residents still without heat Tuesday, as a storm is forecast to bring up to 8 inches of snow in the Rocky Mountains region this week. Temperatures are forecast to fall to 2 degrees in Aspen on Tuesday night, according...

hen NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in 2015, researchers hoped that its data would help them unravel some of the dwarf planet's mysteries. Instead, the discoveries made during the close-up look at Pluto and its moon Charon revealed more questions that needed answering. One of the big revelations from the flyby was the discovery of an ocean beneath the icy shell encapsulating Pluto. The ice shell was thin in a spot near the equator that's about the size of Texas, known as Sputnik Planitia, which helped researchers notice Pluto's odd topography and suggest the ocean's existence. But this...

The ice in the Arctic is melting and opening new navigation routes, with Russia responding with a fleet of 44 icebreakers and China developing its own fleet although they are nowhere near polar regions. The United States had just one operational polar-class icebreaker. The 42-year old Polar Star was assigned permanently to Antarctic waters. "We have to get in the game," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in Seattle on Thursday. "We are an Arctic nation without Arctic resources," added Murkowski who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

You may be bundled up during the polar vortex that’s sweeping the nation, but for some outdoor enthusiasts, it was the perfect temperature for this year’s Arrowhead 135 ultramarathon. The a race is purposely held in late January or early February each year to line up with what they hope is the coldest temperatures of the year. It runs roughly 135 miles between International Falls, Minnesota, to Lake Vermillion in Minnesota along the arrowhead State Trail. This year, they were right on the money, as temperatures dropped as low as -30 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s supposed to be coupled with this...