Free Republic

As former leaders of our parties in the United States Senate, we know what it takes to achieve a bipartisan breakthrough in Congress. For all the talk of discord in Washington, we see the possibility of finding common ground on a divisive issue. As surprising as it may sound, climate change offers an opportunity for both parties to come together and deliver a victory - and cash dividends - to the American people. Congress should approve legislation to place a meaningful fee on carbon-dioxide emissions that ripples through all sectors of our economy, and return the revenues it generates to...

UNITED NATIONS - Climate change and conflict are forcing growing numbers of people to go hungry, flee their homes and lose critical access to water, the United Nations said on Wednesday in a look at progress in its global development goals. The number of hungry people has risen for the first time in a decade, and violence and conflict are causing food problems in 18 nations, the U.N. said in its assessment. Member nations of the U.N. adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 in a concerted effort to conquer poverty, inequality and other international woes by a 2030...

LONDON — Women must be at the heart of climate action if the world is to limit the deadly impact of disasters such as floods, former Irish president and U.N. rights commissioner Mary Robinson said on Monday. Robinson, also a former U.N. climate envoy, said women were most adversely affected by disasters and yet are rarely "put front and center" of efforts to protect the most vulnerable. "Climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution," she said at a meeting of climate experts at London's Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Entrepreneurship. "Feminism doesn't mean excluding men,...

David Inouye is an accidental climate scientist. More than 40 years ago, the University of Maryland biologist started studying when wildflowers, birds, bees and butterflies first appeared each spring on this mountain. These days, plants and animals are arriving at Rocky Mountain Biological Lab a week or two earlier than they were 30 years ago. The robins that used to arrive in early April now show up in mid-March. Marmots end their winter slumber ever earlier. "If the climate weren't changing, we wouldn't see these kind of changes happen," Inouye said while standing on a bed of wildflowers that are...

James Hansen wishes he was wrong. He wasn't. NASA's top climate scientist in 1988, Hansen warned the world on a record hot June day 30 years ago that global warming was here and worsening. In a scientific study that came out a couple months later, he even forecast how warm it would get, depending on emissions of heat-trapping gases. The hotter world that Hansen envisioned in 1988 has pretty much come true so far, more or less. Three decades later, most climate scientists interviewed rave about the accuracy of Hansen's predictions given the technology of the time. Hansen won't say,...

President Trump...is increasingly putting his finger on the scale to help once-iconic industries that are declining as a share of the American economy, at the expense of some of the country’s fastest-growing sectors. The president’s attempts to boost domestic steel manufacturing and coal mining have come largely through policies that limit foreign competition, like tariffs, and proposals to prevent coal-fired power plants from closing. Those efforts have produced only modest job gains so far in two blue-collar sectors that Mr. Trump championed in his run to the White House. But they have injected uncertainty into a host of other growing...

In the future, seas will rise far higher than they are today. The question is whether it happens quickly or slowly. There's enough ice stacked on top of Antarctica to raise seas around the globe by almost 200 feet. While it takes time for major changes to occur with that much ice, Antarctica is melting faster than we thought, according to a study recently published in the journal Nature. The melting rate has been speeding up significantly in recent years. Between 1992 and 2017, Antarctica lost more than 3.3 trillion tons of ice, causing sea levels around the globe to...

It seems Pope Francis has learned little since his 2015 encyclical calling on the world to fight climate change by limiting the use of modern technologies and fossil fuels. He called many of the world’s leading oil companies to the carpet last week in a meeting he “requested” (anyone who says no to a meeting with the pope risks alienating many of the world’s estimated 1.3 billion Catholics) with the companies’ top executives. Francis called on the oil companies to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, to save the Earth. In a column written when Francis issued his...

Antarctic melting faster than evah! This has been the global warming scare story of the week, heavily promoted by the usual suspects, including Time, CBS, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the New York Times and, inevitably, the BBC. Here is the BBC version: Antarctica is shedding ice at an accelerating rate. So it’s over, right? The Warmunists were right, the deniers were wrong and global warming is a super serial crisis we need to deal with NOW not the day after tomorrow… Actually no. The first thing to note is that the study is published in Nature, which is alarmist...

Atlantic mackerel, a fatty schooling fish, for years has been caught by fleets in parts of Europe and sold around the world—where it gets pickled, grilled, smoked, and fried. It is among the United Kingdom's key exports. But a decade ago, warming temperatures began driving this popular fish north, into seas controlled by Iceland. Almost overnight, this seafood gold began shredding relations between some of the world's most stable governments. It led to unsustainable fishing, trade embargoes, and boat blockades. It even helped convince Iceland to drop its bid to join the EU. And that was among friendly nations. Welcome...

Fossilized hand and footprints have revealed that mankind lived on the Tibetan plateau at the height of the Ice Age -- 16,000 years earlier than anyone previously thought. The 19 fossilized signs of life have also cast doubt on the theory that the plateau was fully covered by a glacier one kilometer thick at that time. The 20,000 year-old prints, 85 kilometers (53 miles) from Lhasa, predates any archaeological evidence on the plateau and suggests that man may have migrated to the "roof of the world" extremely early on. At the arid and frigid site, 4,200 meters above sea level,...

Germany is set to miss its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions target by 8 percent, according to German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The German government set itself the goal of reducing national greenhouse gas emissions until 2020 by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels, but a draft government report estimates that the country will only be able to reduce emissions by 32 percent. Officials had previously estimated a shortfall of 5 percent to 8 percent. The document blames “unexpected economic developments and unexpected population growth” for the failure to meet the target. Increased economic activity and strong population growth generally cause...

Electric automaker Tesla is cutting 9% of its employees across the company ... Throughout its nearly 15 years of existence, the company has never made a profit, ... Tesla will also not be renewing its residential sales agreement with Home Depot, Musk said, opting instead to focus on selling its solar products in its stores and on its website.

We live in times where moral ambiguity can have devastating and even deadly consequences. When it comes to the reality of climate change, there is no ambiguity of the disastrous impact of human degradation of the planet. Just in the past two weeks, a Harvard University study estimates that over 4,500 lives were lost as a consequence of Hurricane Maria. Well over a decade following Hurricane Katrina, white New Orleans has recovered; black New Orleans has not. See a pattern here? The devastating effects of climate change are undeniable, as is this disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable communities throughout...

Canada’s climate is getting hotter and wetter and it may have an impact on your mental health. That’s what experts are warning as Canada’s climate continues to shift dramatically, causing severe flooding in many parts of the country, and even droughts and fires in parts of the Prairies and the West Coast. It’s extreme weather events like those experienced in the 2016 wildfires in Fort McMurray and the 2013 floods in Toronto that can trigger mental-health disorders such as anxiety and depression, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And while some may believe these events are few and far...

Even if global warming is curbed and the increase in global temperature is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, scientists warn rising CO2 concentrations could still trigger a dangerous increase in extreme weather. Broadly speaking, more CO2 translates to higher temperatures, but the relationship between atmosphere and climate is complex, and scientists say there are scenarios in which warming could be limited to 1.5 degrees, despite a sizable increase in atmospheric CO2. New climate models developed by researchers at the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford suggest CO2 levels, not global temperatures, are a better predictor of the most...

Some of the oldest and biggest baobab trees in Africa have died recently, becoming the latest possible victims of climate change, according to a study published in the journal Nature Plants on Monday. The trees -- located in Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana and Zambia -- have died completely, or partly, according to the study. Some of them dated back to the times of the ancient Greeks. It's still unclear what is driving the baobab deaths. The authors believe that climate change is the culprit. "We suspect that the demise of monumental baobabs may be associated at least in part...

LONDON - Keeping healthy could become more costly as climate change and water scarcity cause a huge drop in the global production of vegetables and legumes, scientists said on Monday. The amount of vegetables produced could fall by more than a third, especially in hot regions like southern Europe and swathes of Africa and South Asia, said researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. By analyzing studies across 40 countries, with some dating as far back as 1975, they found that hikes in greenhouses gases, water scarcity and global temperatures lowered the amount of vegetables and legumes...

Tampa, United States: Global warming is expected to make vegetables significantly scarcer around the world, unless new growing practices and resilient crop varieties are adopted, researchers warned on Monday. By the end of this century, less water and hotter air will combine to cut average yields of vegetables -- which are crucial to a healthy diet -- by nearly one-third, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.A 7.2 Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) increase in temperature, which scientists expect by 2100 if global warming continues on its current trajectory, reduces average yields by 31.5 percent, said the...

This past weekend leaders of the world's leading industrial powers – also known as the Group of Seven, or G-7 – met in Canada to discuss the global economy, trade and climate protection. A critical issue that won't go away is this pernicious cycle: Climate change is causing temperatures to rise around the world. In response, people are racing to install more air conditioners to keep sweltering populations cool. This, in turn, increases demand for electricity and contributes to warming the climate. Why is this a problem and what can be done about it? During the past four decades, extreme...