Free Republic

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning primary victory over powerful U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley in the working-class New York district stretching from the Bronx to Queens is likely to propel her avowedly left-wing platform into the Democratic mainstream as the 2018 midterm elections heat up. But her detailed proposals to deal with climate change could prove among the most influential at a time when the Democrats have failed to rally around any policy that could feasibly reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically enough to make a difference. Ocasio-Cortez outlined plans to transition the United States to a 100 percent renewable energy system by 2035....

The adoption of clean energies to power electric grids won't be sufficient to meet the Paris climate targets established by the United Nations. According to new research, the continued use of fossil fuels for a variety of industrial processes, to power vehicles and heat buildings, is likely to push CO2 emissions beyond manageable levels. "We focused on the role of fossil fuel emissions that originate in industries like cement or steel making, fuel our transport sector from cars to freight to aviation and goes into heating our buildings," Shinichiro Fujimori, researcher for Environmental Studies and Kyoto University in Japan, said...

QUEENS, N.Y. ― Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning primary victory over powerful U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley in the working-class New York district stretching from the Bronx to Queens is likely to propel her avowedly left-wing platform into the Democratic mainstream as the 2018 midterm elections heat up. But her detailed proposals to deal with climate change could prove among the most influential at a time when the Democrats have failed to rally around any policy that could feasibly reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically enough to make a difference. Ocasio-Cortez outlined plans to transition the United States to a 100 percent renewable energy...

Nasa has released stunning images of Jupiter taken from the Juno spacecraft. The breathtaking images show swirling cloud belts and tumultuous vortices within Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. Scientists said the photos allowed them to see the planet’s weather system in greater detail. According to the space station, the brighter colours in the images represent clouds made up of ammonia and water, while the darker blue-green spirals represent cloud material "deeper in Jupiter's atmosphere." At the time Juno was about 9,600 miles from the planet's cloud tops. The Juno satellite was launched in order to improve Nasa’s understanding of the solar...

JinkoSolar Holding Co. is the world’s largest maker of solar panels after four previous top companies tripped up in the past decade ... Many of the top producing companies have had problems with quality control. ... China’s large solar industry has stoked fears of a slow-developing environmental crisis as the country’s solar panels and infrastructure age and need to be replaced. (RELATED: Old Solar Panels Causing An Environmental Crisis In China) China has yet to develop a plan for disposing broken solar panels, which are difficult to recycle. The effect could be up to 20 million metric tons of waste...

A federal judge on Monday dismissed lawsuits by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland alleging that five of the world's largest oil companies should pay to protect the cities' residents from the impacts of climate change. U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted a motion by the companies -- BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and Chevron Corp. -- to dismiss the suits, ruling that while global warming was a real threat, it must be fixed "by our political branches." "The benefits of fossil fuels are worldwide," he wrote. "The problem deserves a solution on a...

A federal judge on Monday threw out a closely watched lawsuit brought by two California cities against fossil fuel companies over the costs of dealing with climate change. The decision is a stinging defeat for the plaintiffs, San Francisco and Oakland, and raises warning flags for other local governments around the United States that have filed similar suits, including New York City. The judge, William Alsup of Federal District Court in San Francisco, acknowledged the science of global warming and the great risks to the planet, as did the oil and gas companies being sued. But in his ruling, Judge...

This opinion is worth the read, for those interested.

It was June 23, 1988 when NASA's Dr. James Hansen testified before Congress about the coming catastrophic warming of the planet.  He gave three different scenarios for the progress of global warming over the next 30 years. Well, it's 30 years on from that testimony.  How did Hansen do? Wall Street Journal: Mr. Hansen's testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions.  He called Scenario A "business as usual," as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and '80s.  This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018.  Scenario B set emissions lower, rising...

Former NASA climate scientist James Hansen famously warned Congress almost 30 years ago to the day that human activities had put the world on the path to disaster, but two scientists now say the global warming “godfather’s” predictions were wrong. Cato Institute scientists Patrick Michaels and Ryan Maue compared Hansen’s temperature predictions to real-world observations and found his supposedly “highly unlikely” forecast with the least amount of warming was the most accurate. “Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16,” Michaels and Maue wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Assessed by...

James E. Hansen wiped sweat from his brow. Outside it was a record-high 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, as the NASA scientist testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a prolonged heat wave, which he decided to cast as a climate event of cosmic significance. He expressed to the senators his “high degree of confidence” in “a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”

James Hansen issued dire warnings in the summer of 1988. Today earth is only modestly warmer. James E. Hansen wiped sweat from his brow. Outside it was a record-high 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, as the NASA scientist testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a prolonged heat wave, which he decided to cast as a climate event of cosmic significance. He expressed to the senators his “high degree of confidence” in “a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.” With that testimony and an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research,...

VINALHAVEN, Me. - At 3:30 in the morning on a Friday in late May, the lobstermen ate breakfast. Outside, their boats bobbed in the labradorite water, lit only by the dull yellow of streetlamps across the bay. It was windy, too windy for fishing, but one by one the island’s fishermen showed up at the Surfside cafe anyway. Over pancakes and eggs, they grumbled about the season’s catch to date. Some of the lobstermen said it was just too early in the season. Others feared that it was a sign of things to come. Since the early 1980s, climate change...

One factor causing migrants to risk everything - even potentially losing their children - to travel through the heat of summer in the dangerous desert and towards the barbed wire fences and tent cities springing up just south of the United States border: climate change. Many of the migrants being detained here now hail from what's referred variously as the Dry Corridor or the Northern Triangle, which consists of the three countries immediately south of Mexico: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The United Nations published a report in June 2016 that described the depth of the food insecurity crisis in...

Rising temperatures from climate change are driving animals northward into new environments, raising concerns that pathogens hitching a ride may bring new diseases -- especially to southern U.S. states, including Louisiana. The world's warmest and wettest climates are home to some of its most worrying diseases like dengue, yellow fever and malaria. Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states could become a portal through which new diseases enter the United States, carried in the bloodstream of northward-bound species, scientists say. The warning comes as an Associated Press analysis this week of temperature data shows widespread and faster warming over the past...

A group of Republican senators is calling for an investigation into National Science Foundation (NSF) grants teaching meteorologists about climate change, saying the program has moved past science and into political action. Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.), James Lankford (Okla.), and Jim Inhofe (Okla.) requested the probe in a letter sent to the NSF inspector general Wednesday, saying the grants are “not science – it is propagandizing," NBC News reported. The letter states that the foundation has “issued several grants which seek to influence political and social debate rather than conduct scientific research.” The senators claim that...

LONDON (AP) — No beer at this time of year? A British trade group says there’s a shortage of carbon dioxide in Northern Europe, sparking fears that drinks may lack fizz just as thirsty soccer fans fill pubs for the World Cup. Gavin Partington, director-general of the British Soft Drinks Association, says the shortage is due to the closure of several production sites for various reasons, including seasonal maintenance. But industry publication Gasworld says the situation is worse this year because normal maintenance has coincided with technical issues at chemical plants that also produce carbon dioxide.

The friendly neighborhood meteorologist — found in a 2010 poll to be more skeptical than the general public about global warming — has rapidly evolved to not only accept climate change but to share the news with audiences in hundreds of U.S. television markets.

There’s a ‘type’ when it comes to climate change denial it turns out – and it’s a pretty simple one: old, white and racist. Researchers found that American voters with the highest levels of racial resentment were far more likely to dispute the idea of man-made climate change. Researcher Salil Benegal at DePauw University analysed data from American National Election Studies – and found that Republicans with high racial resentment scores were 84% likely to disagree with man-made climate change. Previous Pew research has shown that climate change deniers tend to be old and white. The scores were measured on...