Free Republic

Green New Dealers have convinced themselves that our planet faces an imminent, existential, manmade climate cataclysm – that can be prevented solely and simply by replacing fossil fuels with biofuel, wind, solar and battery energy. They achieve this state of absolute certainty largely by propagating constant scare stories while ignoring and suppressing contradictory evidence and viewpoints.They deliberately and deceptively talk about “carbon pollution.” Carbon is soot – what our cars, factories and power plants now emit in very small quantities. The honest, accurate term is carbon dioxide: the colorless, odorless, invisible gas that we exhale and plants need to grow, by...

The polar vortex, explained: Short (VIDEO)

Forget "rolling coal." A new trend called "ICE-ing," in which pickup truck owners purposefully block electric vehicle charging stations, appears to be gaining ground around the country. The practice, whose name is derived from "internal combustion engine," was observed over the holidays at a Sheetz gas station in Hickory, N.C. Reddit user Leicina shared a photo on Dec. 23, 2018, of three large pickups blocking access to Tesla Inc. charging stations. The drivers apparently chanted "----Tesla." "I've never had a supercharging experience like this one," wrote Leicina, who owns a Tesla Model 3. "These trucks blocked all the chargers, chanted...

... The new U.S. report, as well as a United Nations report issued in October, instead aim at frightening the public—exactly the approach that so manifestly has failed to move the needle for 35 years. Maybe it’s because voters are skeptical of doom-mongering. Maybe they have grown fatalistic about climate change. Or maybe, reflecting the folly of climate campaigners, they’ve gotten a message that acting on greenhouse gases requires giving up prosperity. Reporting Sunday on the French fuel-tax demonstrations, the New York Times noted: “Many in the crowd said that they did not disdain the government’s environmental goals, but that...

Experts at Colorado State University predict storm activity for the remainder of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season will be "below average." Their latest report predicts the Atlantic could produce nine named storms and three hurricanes from now to the end of hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30. Of those three hurricanes, experts predict one will be a major hurricane, which means a Category 3, 4 or 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. A Category 3 storm has wind speeds between 111 and 129 miles per hour, while the strongest Category 5 storm hits 157 mph or higher. The report, produced...

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...

A new generation of outdoor lights spreading across landscapes require greater scrutiny to reduce harm to wildlife, says a USC-led research group that developed a new tool to help fix the problem.

Karenna Gore, director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, urged the Catholic Church and other “faith communities” to become climate change activists and preach about taking action on the issue. “I actually think that [preaching is] one of the main things that could actually break through on this issue. One of the ways that we could break through on this issue is if people really start to think deeply on another level about it; on a moral and spiritual level and are moved from a different kind of place to take action, to raise it with...

After several years of often rancorous debate—and more back-and-forth action than a beach restoration project Idaho lawmakers finally have decided that climate change will be taught in Idaho schools. “It’s a wonderful thing for for our state and its students!” said Coeur d’Alene environmental science teacher Jamie Esler, who served on a state committee of award-winning educators, parents, and scientists that developed the K12 science standards.The science standards developed by the highly qualified committee, over painstaking months of work, maintain “integrity around the science of climate,” and will enable Idaho science teachers to fully educate their students about human-caused climate...

Many of America’s leading television networks did a poor job of covering climate change last year, even as the newly minted Trump administration worked to unravel regulations meant to tackle the phenomenon and the U.S. was pummeled by a series of record-breaking natural disasters, according to a new report. The group Media Matters for America analyzed climate change coverage on major broadcasters’ nightly news programs and Sunday morning political shows - including those on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and PBS - over the course of 2017. While a total of 260 minutes were devoted to climate change during the...

Climate researchers are warning that a large chunk of the globe could become a desert if the goals of the Paris climate change accord are not met. The findings published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change show that more than 25 percent of the world's population will live in a perpetual state of drought and growing desertification if the Earth's temperature rises by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. The report says the solution is to prevent global warming from rising above 1.5 degrees C, which the researchers say would significantly reduce the number of regions of the world affected...

It’s like something out of George Orwell’s 1984. Canada’s Competition Bureau, an arm’s length agency funded by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to the tune of almost $50 million annually, investigated three organizations accused of denying mainstream climate science for over a year, following a complaint from an environmental group. The bureau discontinued its 14-month probe in June, citing “available evidence, the assessment of the facts in this case, and to ensure the effective allocation of limited resources”, according to Josephine A.L. Palumbo, Deputy Commissioner of Competition, Deceptive Marketing Practices Directorate. But it will re-open its investigation should it receive...

<p>The unprecedented hurricanes that have hit Texas and Florida, and the wildfires that have rampaged across California, seem to be pushing some reluctant conservatives from climate change skepticism to acceptance of reality. If so, that's great, because they're uniquely positioned to do something about it.</p>

The victims of Hurricane Harvey have a murderer - and it’s not the storm. The horrors hurled at Houston and the Himalayan lowlands in late August were heartbreaking - but also infuriating. How many times must we see this disaster movie - titled Hurricane Harvey in 2017 - before we intervene and change the ending? And how long before we hold the ultimate authors of such climate catastrophes accountable for the miseries they inflict? What makes this so infuriating is that it shouldn’t be happening. Experts have warned for decades that global warming would increase these sorts of weather extremes...

<p>With hurricane hunters tracking one monster storm in the Atlantic Ocean, another tropical storm has formed, and it threatens to form into a hurricane as well.</p> <p>Tropical Storm Jose formed in the open Atlantic, far from land, on Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service.</p>

All of this raises critical questions for climate change law and policy. Here, the team of lawyers at the Sabin Center offers a brief primer on eleven key climate law issues highlighted by and likely to arise due to Hurricane Harvey: 1. Disaster Recovery Legislation... 2. Flood Insurance Reform... 3. Flood Maps 4. Flood Protection for Federal Projects 5. Controlling Air Emissions from Damaged Facilities 6. Handling Toxic Pollutants and Discharges of Toxic Water Pollution 7. Chemical Safety 8. Damage to Superfund Sites 9. Zoning and Building Codes 10. Public utilities 11. Climate Change Attribution and Hurricanes: Numerous scientists have...

I was surprised to discover that Al Gore's new movie begins with words from me! While icebergs melt dramatically, Gore plays a clip of me saying, "'An Inconvenient Truth' won him an Oscar, yet much of the movie is nonsense. 'Sea levels may rise 20 feet' -- absurd." He used this comment from one of my TV shows. The "20 feet" claim is absurd -- one of many hyped claims in his movie. His second film, "An Inconvenient Sequel," shows lower Manhattan underwater while Gore intones: "This is global warming!" My goodness! Stossel doubts Al Gore's claim, but pictures don't...

Elon Musk says he will cut ties with President Trump, should the US walk away from the Paris Climate Accord.The billionaire tech investor said Wednesday that if things go as rumored and the White House pulls out of the Paris Agreement, he will recuse himself from the President's Business Advisory Council.Musk broke the news first in a Tweet:Then in a follow-up confirmation that removed all doubt: This as multiple reports suggest President Donald Trump is leaning toward a decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Accord, a landmark deal to curb carbon emissions that was approved by 195...

Several media outlets are reporting the world’s largest repository of seeds, acting as a “backstop” against global catastrophe, has been compromised by global warming. Well, the news turned out to be little more than media hype. Here’s why. The left-leaning Guardian was the first to report the Global Seed Vault located in the Svalbard archipelago was “breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.” Vox and Wired echoed the Guardian’s reporting. Vox reported the Norwegian designers of the seed vault that was supposed to operate without human assistance for “eternity” had...

In the latest in radical climate doomsaying, a new report warns that fossil fuel consumption will need to be reduced “below a quarter of primary energy supply by 2100” to avoid possibly disastrous effects on global temperatures. In their report, titled “Pathways for balancing CO2 emissions and sinks,” a team of eight scientists warns that “anthropogenic emissions need to peak within the next 10 years, to maintain realistic pathways to meeting the COP21 emissions and warming targets.” The statement was immediately repackaged by environmentalists to read: “Scientists say we have ten years to save the earth.” As is always the...