Free Republic

Is ‘Davos’ done? Don’t worry, this is not a political rave: it’s a look at the astro-logistics of Davos the town, the World Economic Forum and it’s founder Klaus Schwab. Davos, as you probably know, is a town in the Swiss Alps that plays host to an annual meeting of the economic elite. It’s always been controversial but lately even some of it’s most fervent fans are jaded. This year the first images streamed out of Davos were of the protest signs hanging outside some of the residents homes and if you believe the tabloids, visiting sex workers outnumbered the...

In findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Saint Louis University researchers and colleagues report that elephants play a key role in creating forests that store more atmospheric carbon and maintaining the biodiversity of forests in Africa. If the already critically endangered elephants become extinct, the rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would lose between six and nine percent of its ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming. **SNIP** Within the forest, some trees have light wood (low carbon density trees) while others make heavy wood (high carbon density...

Republicans’ contrived outrage over the Biden administration’s promotion of climate-friendly stoves has me thinking about how unprepared they are for the realities of our high-tech future. Because climate-conscious appliances and devices aren’t going anywhere. Humans’ continued obsession with technology - whether that’s stoves or blockchain platforms to trade goods or high-powered game consoles - is terrible for the environment. Merely producing these things often requires mining for resources, as well as an assembly process that leaves a major carbon footprint. But the energy to run these things, multiplied across the millions of people who use them, really adds up. That’s...

DENVER - Bitter cold is in the forecast for Colorado. The high temperature Thursday will struggle to surpass zero degrees, and wind chills could plummet as low as 50 degrees below zero in some parts of the state. **SNIP** Now that you’re braced for the arctic blast, we can turn to the question you may well be asking: How and why in the heck is it going to be colder in Denver than it is in Anchorage? The answer lies in what’s known as the polar vortex. According to the National Weather Service, the polar vortex is a low-pressure system...

The International Olympic Committee is delaying the selection of the 2030 Winter Olympics host city after discussing climate change and sustainability during its executive board meeting on Tuesday. The 2030 host city was originally scheduled to be announced after the 2023 IOC session. The executive board is giving the Future Host Commission more time to look at the preliminary results of academic research that shows a potential reduction in the number of climate-reliable hosts. A proposal to ensure climate reliability would require hosts to show average minimum temperatures of below zero degrees for snow competition venues during the Winter Games...

Lurch the climate czar may be the most useless bureaucrat, and that’s saying a lot. There’s one thing we can know about the government — the goal is always to collect money. The purpose of carbon credits has always been to make it look like corporate and foreign entities are reducing their carbon footprint when all they are doing is buying a worthless piece of paper. While the U.S. drowns under climate tyranny, China and India get to pretend they will start reducing their carbon emissions down the road. The scheme to sell “carbon credits” is nothing more than a...

At first glance, the connections between the world’s growing population and climate change seem obvious. The more people we have on this planet, the larger their collective impact on the climate. However, a closer look with a longer time horizon reveals relationships between population size and climate change that can help us better understand both humanity’s predicament as the global population nears 8 billion people – a milestone the United Nations expects the world to hit on about Nov. 15, 2022. **SNIP** Using knowledge to reset the cycle again Every species, if left unchecked, would grow exponentially. But species are...

Mars is increasingly in the viewfinder of planetary scientists, as NASA has made it a goal to send a manned mission to the red planet, sending rovers to its surface and developing technology to prepare for human exploration. The increased focus on Mars has led to some intriguing discoveries - most recently, that life might have existed on the planet before climate change ended it. That's the suggestion of a new study; read on to find out more. Researchers from the University of Arizona aren't positive there was once life on Mars (in a news release, they call it a...

The White House is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth to temper the effects of global warming, a process sometimes called solar geoengineering or sunlight reflection. The research plan will assess climate interventions, including spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, and should include goals for research, what's necessary to analyze the atmosphere, and what impact these kinds of climate interventions may have on Earth, according to the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Congress directed the research plan be produced in...

MILWAUKEE - Most voters in Wisconsin who spoke with Fox News said addressing climate change is more important than curbing inflation ahead of the November midterm elections. "Climate change is going to affect our children, our children's children," Heather, from Green Bay, said. But Matt, from Milwaukee, said he cares more about lowering inflation as he feels the impact of price hikes every day. "It comes out of my pocket," Matt said. "I pay for that, and it's easy for me to pick out." Nearly 80% of Democratic Wisconsin voters said climate change was the most concerning issue, an August...

It’s been barely a month since President Joe Biden announced he would be forgiving $10,000 of student loan debt for millions of borrowers and his administration is already walking back certain elements of that plan. The U.S. Department of Education just quietly changed some of its own guidelines for who does and does not qualify for loan forgiveness. Specifically, it reversed its inclusion of older types of loans: Perkins loans and Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL). The plan as announced only applied to federal loans, not private ones. But it would allow Perkins and FFEL loans - which are privately...

The drama continues inside the nonprofit organization that became synonymous with a nationwide protest movement against police violence. This time, an argument over millions of dollars might play out in open court. A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles accuses Shalomyah Bowers, a consultant brought in to help run the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation of pilfering $10 million in funds away from the organization’s grassroots wing. The suit names Bowers, a consulting firm he runs and BLMGNF as defendants and accuses Bowers specifically of “siphoning” money contributed by donors from the on-the-ground activists it was intended to help. The...

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry's office participated in multiple discussions with left-wing environmental groups that appeared to inform policymaking decisions, according to emails shared with Fox News Digital. Officials in the SPEC office sought to discuss key agenda items as recently as December with non-governmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the United Nations Foundation, according to documents obtained by government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with Fox News Digital. The documents, which were obtained via information request, did not show any similar conversations or meetings with fossil fuel energy groups or companies. "You'll...

The Inflation Reduction Act, the tax and climate bill President Biden signed into law last week, could reduce the costs from climate-related damages by up to $1.9 trillion, according to an analysis by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The analysis published Tuesday is based on three models crafted by Rhodium Group, Energy Innovation and Princeton University. They found the law’s climate provisions could potentially cut up to 1 billion annual metric tons of carbon dioxide by the end of the decade, nearly meeting the White House target of cutting emissions in half relative to 2005 by 2030. To...

Russia now controls $12.4 trillion worth of Ukraine's key natural resources, according to an analysis for The Washington Post by SecDev. If the Kremlin succeeds in annexing Ukrainian land seized during Russia's invasion, Kyiv would permanently lose almost two-thirds of its deposits. Moscow controls 63% of Ukraine's coal deposits, 11% of its oil, 20% of its natural gas, 42% of its metals, and 33% of its rare earths.If the Kremlin succeeds in annexing Ukrainian land seized during Russia's invasion, Kyiv would lose almost two-thirds of its deposits, the report said, denying the country of its essential economic pillars.

A study that investigated the placement of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) temperature stations found that 96 percent of the facilities used to measure heat failed to meet the agency’s own “uncorrupted placement” standards. Research for the study shows the 96 percent corruption is because the stations’ measurements are tainted by the effects of urbanization – or heat produced because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. The Heartland Institute compiled the report using satellite and in-person surveys of NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperatures in the United...

Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday that now is the time to act on climate change as the U.S. experiences record heat and wildfires rage across Europe. "They're saying that if we don't stop using our atmosphere as an open sewer, and if we don't stop these heat trapping emissions, things are gonna get a lot worse," Gore told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. "More people will be killed and the survival of our civilization is at stake." Gore said global warming pollution is trapping the heat equivalent of 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs. "That's why the heat records...

**SNIP** But it is tough to be John Kerry right now. It didn’t have to be this way. The 40-year political veteran and current “Special Presidential Envoy” - commonly referred to as the “International Climate Czar” - has come under intense scrutiny lately for both his lifestyle - which runs counter to his eco-centric messaging - and his refusal to answer basic questions about the finances of his State Department division, including its size, payroll and specific mission. Let’s unpack the extreme hypocrisy on both. While Kerry regularly rails against fossil fuel use and their effects on the “existential threat...

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the executive branch’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, effectively insisting that Congress take back its jurisdiction over environmental regulations and muddying the legislative waters in the last crucial weeks of the summer session. The court’s 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency on June 30 set back President Joe Biden’s climate agenda by curtailing the EPA’s power over the energy sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, meaning Congress will likely have to pass these regulations. The Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers are desperate to pass some form of climate infrastructure bill as time...

The climate advocates who cheered President Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House last year are preparing to give up on Washington. Instead, environmentalists and many of their Democratic allies are starting to shift their focus to state capitals as the places to press for action on climate change - going back to a strategy that they employed with some success during the Trump era. The flight from D.C. is in large part a response to 18 months of frustration with major setbacks to Biden’s climate agenda, capped by Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that hobbled the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority...