Free Republic

In the past, scientists were reluctant to attribute particular extreme weather events to climate change. But for the second consecutive year, they have done so with confidence. Thanks to improved modeling, increased computer power, and better skill in interpreting data, attribution science – a young branch of climate science – has been blossoming, says Jeff Rosenfeld, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS). Based on the research of 120 scientists in 10 countries, the report comprises 18 peer-reviewed chapters; each deals with a particular weather phenomenon during 2017. “The studies look at what the climate is now,...

Climate change – arguably humanity’s most existential challenge – requires urgent global action. As the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2019 will show only too clearly, environmental crises – notably a failure to tackle climate change – are among the likeliest and highest-impact risks that the world faces over the next decade. Indeed, 2018 saw record levels of costs due to extreme weather events. The urgent scientific message on climate change finds it hard to cut through the news cycle and the competing agendas of our ever more complex world. The effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the...

Full title of article: "A $350 toilet powered by worms may be the ingenious future of sanitation that Bill Gates has been dreaming about" Excerpt: Worm toilets require no traditional flushing and aren't hooked up to a sewer system — instead, worms compost human waste. More than 4,000 such "Tiger Toilets" have been installed to date across India, in homes of people who were previously defecating in the open. The worm toilets smell a lot better than a pit latrine, and don't breed mosquitoes either. Here's how a $350 toilet powered by worms could change the world and save lives.

Researchers have found yet another way in which climate change has been detrimental to migrating birds. As European winters have become warmer, pied flycatchers traveling from Africa to reach breeding grounds in the Netherlands are arriving to find that resident great tits have already claimed nesting sites for the season. As a result, the number of flycatchers killed in great tit nests has risen dramatically. "When pied flycatchers and great tits are more synchronous in their timing, this leads to a higher level of conflict over nesting sites," says Jelmer Samplonius, who did the work at the University of Groningen,...

If extraterrestrials are out there, odds are they're too clever to have been blindsided by global warming run amok. Could it be that climate change is a universal menace? A recent article in Forbes addresses the idea that the galaxy might be strewn with extinct alien civilizations, burned to a crisp by ferocious planetary warming. The idea is certainly intriguing, and has obvious relevance as a cautionary tale for us. But could it be true? The article doesn’t say these hypothetical societies died out thanks to an alien fondness for SUVs. Instead, the aliens are hypothesized to be the victims...

Late last year, the Trump administration released the latest national climate assessment on Black Friday in what many assumed was an attempt to bury the document. If that was the plan, it backfired, and the assessment wound up earning more coverage than it probably would have otherwise. But much of that coverage perpetuated a decades-old practice, one that has been weaponized by the fossil fuel industry: false equivalence. While print outlets aren’t perfect, TV news has lagged further behind on climate, often presenting climate contrarians as an equal and opposite balance to climate scientists. In coverage of the national climate...

A growing number of Democrats considering a presidential bid have signaled support for the sweeping "Green New Deal" pushed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other liberal lawmakers, underscoring how the 2020 field is being pulled further left by the influential progressive wing. An analysis by Fox News shows at least eight potential Democratic candidates have voiced support for or touted aspects of the proposal, which amounts to a drastic overhaul of the U.S. economy and government benefit system. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., 37, who says he is looking at a 2020 presidential run, told Fox News he was “excited” to...

Heavy snowfall continued Thursday in parts of Austria and southern Germany, with several places cut off and the bad weather expected to persist. Snow was causing problems in other parts of Europe, even in Norway’s Arctic Svalbard archipelago. Austrian police said that a 16-year-old boy from Australia was killed in an avalanche in St. Anton am Arlberg as he was skiing with his family on Wednesday. In neighboring Slovakia, the mountain rescue service said a 37-year-old Slovak man was killed by an avalanche in the Mala Fatra mountains. That brought to at least 16 the number of weather-related deaths reported...

We have just a little over a decade left to act and then - *poof* – the world as we know it is gone forever. We have just 12 years to make massive and unprecedented changes to global energy infrastructure to limit global warming to moderate levels. And while both Republicans and mainstream Democrats have refused to do anything to stop this horror show the next generation has stepped up to the plate: Young activists, who will be forced to live with the ravages of climate change, find this upsetting. So they have proposed a plan of their own. It’s...

It is frustrating: you buy a new appliance then just after the warranty runs out, it gives up the ghost. You can’t repair it and can’t find anyone else to at a decent price, so it joins the global mountain of junk. You’re forced to buy a replacement, which fuels climate change from the greenhouse gases released in the manufacturing process. But help is at hand, because citizens in the EU and parts of the USA will soon get a "right to repair" - of sorts. This consists of a series of proposals from European environment ministers to force manufacturers...

For three decades, global warming alarmists have harassed society with stories of gloom and doom as a result of the carbon dioxide emitted into the air by the burning of fossil fuel. They are exercising precisely what prominent writer H.L. Mencken described as “the whole point of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”. In fact, the man-caused global warming or climate change panic may well be the best hobgoblin ever conceived. It has half the world clamoring...

Experts say it may take a recession to reduce the gases that are warming the planet. No matter that coal-fired power plants went out of business in record numbers, or that Americans nearly doubled their purchases of electric cars. The U.S. increased its carbon dioxide emissions in 2018, and a large part of the reason was one normally cited as a bonus - substantial economic growth. A booming American economy meant increased industrial production, more truck and air travel and more offices and other workplaces to heat - all combining, along with other factors, to create the second-largest annual increase...

Deadly winter weather blasted Europe for yet another day Tuesday, trapping hundreds of people in Alpine regions, whipping up high winds that caused flight delays and cancellations and raising the risks of more deadly avalanches in the mountains. At least 13 people have been killed in weather-related accidents in Europe over the last week, most of them from avalanches. In Norway, attempts to find the bodies of four skiers were again put on hold due to poor visibility and heavy snowfall. A 29-year Swedish woman and three Finns, aged 29, 32 and 36, were presumed dead after a 300-meter (990-foot)...

More than 90% of the effect of global warming is being absorbed by the oceans, with the seas absorbing energy equivalent to a nuclear bomb every second, a new study has found. New research has analysed records going back to 1871, and found that only a tiny amount of the heat trapped by climate change is affecting the land and ice caps. Most of the energy is being stored in the ocean depths – and could drive sea-level rise and increase the power of hurricanes. The researchers found that lobal warming of the oceans of 436 x 1021 Joules has...

Former GOP Rep. Ryan Costello (Pa.) is signing on to work for a group pushing a business-backed proposal to fight climate change with a carbon tax. Costello, less than a week out of the House, announced Monday in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that he’s the new managing director of Americans for Carbon Dividends. The group is the advocacy affiliate of the Climate Leadership Council, pushing a plan by former GOP Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz to tax carbon dioxide emissions and return the money to individuals and families on a quarterly basis. “I understand the...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ready to tax the rich to make her Green New Deal a reality. “People are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” the recently elected New York Democrat told TV show “60 Minutes” in an interview set to air Sunday. Speaking of prior decades’ taxation rates in the country, Ocasio-Cortez added, “Once you get to the tippy tops, on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.” It shouldn’t be a surprise that the avowed “democratic socialist” went with the predictable “tax the rich”...

The world’s largest airborne observatory was supposed to be parked in Seattle this week, so thousands of scientists attending the “Super Bowl of Astronomy” could behold this marvel: a Boeing 747 outfitted with a massive telescope used to study the fundamental mysteries of the universe. But conference-goers will not be able to see NASA’s space-exploring plane. Its visit to the 233rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society was canceled, one of a growing list of scientific casualties of the partial government shutdown now stretching into its third week. Along with the plane, hundreds of government scientists are also no longer...

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold its first hearing under the chamber’s new Democratic majority on climate change. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who became the panel’s chairman Thursday when the new Democratic-majority House was sworn in, said climate will come before other major issues within Energy and Commerce’s broad jurisdiction, including health care and technology. Pallone said he is dedicating the first hearing to climate is meant in part to highlight how Democrats believe Republicans ignored the issue during their eight years in the majority. “Part of the reason why we want to deal with climate change first...

Action on climate change has been stymied by politics, lobbying by energy companies and the natural pace of scientific research — but one of the most significant barriers is our own minds. Think about how every town seems to have a traffic intersection that’s needlessly dangerous. No matter how many times you think to yourself, “They should really put in a stoplight here,” you don’t call the proper authorities. (You’re already late for work, and it feels like someone else’s problem to solve.)Our mental responses to global warming and climate change follow a similar script. What needs to be done...

The deserts of the southwestern United States have a spare, ethereal beauty, and it turns out a light dusting of snow only cranks up the enchantment. Residents of the southwest were treated to some unusual snowfall this week, with wintry scenes emerging from Albuquerque to Tucson to the Grand Canyon. In the Sonoran desert, powder coated scrubby vegetation and topped those famous saguaro cactuses over New Years. Those who decided to visit the Grand Canyon to ring in 2019 in spite of—or perhaps because of—the government shutdown got to see the park’s majestic red cliffs in rare, snow-capped form. The...