Free Republic

The White House plans to withdraw Kathleen Hartnett White's nomination to head the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House official confirmed to CNN Saturday. Hartnett White, who would have overseen environmental and energy policies across the government, had described the belief in "global warming" as a "kind of paganism" for "secular elites" during a September 2016 interview on "The Right Perspective," an online conservative radio show. She has also said the goal of climate activists and the United Nations was an all-powerful, one-world government and "planetary management," KFile reported. President Donald Trump announced Hartnett White's nomination in October and...

An expansion of Europe's forests towards dark green conifers has stoked global warming, according to a study on Thursday at odds with a widespread view that planting more trees helps human efforts to slow rising temperatures. Forest changes have nudged Europe's summer temperatures up by 0.12 degree Celsius (0.2 Fahrenheit) since 1750, largely because many nations have planted conifers such as pines and spruce whose dark color traps the sun's heat, the scientists said. Lighter-colored broad-leafed trees, such as oak or birch, reflect more sunlight back into space, but have lost ground to fast-growing conifers, used for everything from building...

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed an ambitious bill on Wednesday to combat climate change by increasing the state’s renewable electricity use to 50 percent and doubling energy efficiency in existing buildings by 2030. Brown approved the measure after losing a political battle against oil interests as he also tried to cut petroleum use by half in the state. […] Many moderate Democrats were concerned that the petroleum mandate would hurt California’s working-class residents. The lawmakers sought greater oversight of state regulators, but Brown refused to give up what he viewed as executive authority. …

Hardy souls who shivered and shoveled their way through February in the Northeast now have evidence of just how brutal the weather was, with record cold in at least eight cities and record snowfall in Boston. “We’re the standout globally,” said Art DeGaetano, director of the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. “It’s colder in Siberia, but we’re the farthest below normal.” The climate center shows the New York cities of Buffalo, Syracuse, Binghamton and Ithaca had their coldest months ever. The average temperature was 10.9 degrees in Buffalo, beating the 1934 record of 11.4°. The normal average temperature...

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told a Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee hearing today that the president must have fabricated two oft-repeated climate claims. “Both statements are false,” Sen. Inhofe said of Obama’s global warming claims, since neither the EPA nor the U.N. IPCC climate group can provide any supporting statistics […] “… (A)nd through letters to you, Ms. McCarthy, and on the record in this Committee, we’ve asked the EPA to provide us with the data backing up these two statements, the two statements made by the president, but they don’t have any data and referred us to...

The rocketing costs of gasoline and the escalating price of corn are the result of U.S. government mandates requiring the inclusion of ethanol in the gasoline all Americans must use. The time has long since passed to eliminate ethanol from this primary fuel. A recent report by ActionAid USA, “Fueling the Food Crisis: The Cost to Developing Countries of U.S. Corn Ethanol Expansion” is based on work by researchers at Tufts University. ActionAid USA is an anti-poverty group. The study found that the corn-importing countries of Central America and North Africa are at the highest risk from ethanol expansion—the requirement...