Free Republic

Why did one of the world's top physicists—ever—sign the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation's Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change, which challenges climate alarmism, though he's a liberal, a Democrat, likes President Obama, and has a strong background in climate science? His interview with the UK Register and his foreword to a new study titled Carbon Dioxide: The Good News reveal some of his reasons. Freeman Dyson believes increasing atmospheric CO2 content does more good than harm and that President Obama "chose the wrong side" in the climate debate. He explains that climate change "is not a...

Are electric cars damaging YOUR region? Maps reveal how EVs can be WORSE for the environment than gas-guzzling vehicles In some areas, mostly in the east of the US, the impact of charging up EVs does more harm to the environment In monetary terms, electric cars are about half-a-cent worse per mile for the environment than gas-powered cars With gas cars, the worst damage to the environment, shown in red, took place in highly-populated urban areas They have been hailed as the environmentally-friendly solution to getting around towns and cities. But new research has found electric cars have an overall...

Recycling is a scam. I’ve said it before. It does nothing for the environment. It does plenty for the wallets of the well connected who have recycling businesses. That’s the only reason for recycling.Western countries dump their “recycling” into Third World countries in heaps indistinguishable from the old bad landfills. Except the difference is that they’re in major cities. These filthy photographs show monstrous mounting piles of waste overflowing into streets and even blocking roads in the city of Shenzhen in southern China’s Guangdong Province.The smell is so bad nauseous residents have taken to wearing masks.Tonnes of plastic recycling...

A group dedicated to saving the planet by cutting runaway population increases is raising a new and shocking issue in Washington’s bitter fight over immigration reform: Most of the nation’s population growth is from immigrants, and they are consuming resources dangerously fast. According to Negative Population Growth Inc., 80 percent of the growth in U.S. population comes from immigration, legal, illegal and among American-born children of immigrants... ... "Our nation is already vastly overpopulated,” said Mann. “The evidence is all around us: Millions are out of work, schools and hospitals are overcrowded, our natural resources are dwindling, pollution is increasing,...

<p>High-profile talk emphasizing environmental action at the Communist Party’s 18th national congress attracted a lot of attention...</p> <p>China’s soil contamination problem is among the worst the world has ever seen, according to data released in 2006 by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The study found toxins affecting some 10 million hectares of the country’s 120 million hectares of arable land, and that another 2.1 million hectares of crops were being irrigated with polluted water. Some 133,000 hectares were being used for waste dumps nationwide.</p>

alas, to statist ends... As many of you are likely aware, the 1970 Plymouth Superbird was a special 'aero' version of the popular Plymouth Roadrunner created as a NASCAR homologation special (the company was required to build a minimum of 500 cars in a street version of any specific model to qualify in NASCAR as a 'production car'). Similar to the aerodynamically-advanced 1968 Dodge Charger 500 and further-evolved 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona, Plymouth's 1970 Superbird was intended not only to hit 200mph on NASCAR Superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega, but was also an attempt to lure King Richard Petty back (from Ford) to...

Grants Pass, Ore. (AP) -- A federal appeals court has reaffirmed that muddy water running off logging roads after rainstorms is pollution that requires a special permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Air pollution may be just the thing to fight global warming, some scientists say. Prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate, said a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere could act as a "shade" from the sun's rays and help cool the planet.

April 27, 2006 -- People in the U.S. are breathing cleaner air than a year ago, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. So says the American Lung Association's (ALA) "State of the Air 2006." The annual report focuses on particle pollution (soot) in the air, as well as ozone levels (smog). Last year's winners and losers for year-round soot pollution didn't change. Cheyenne, Wyo. still has the least year-round soot pollution, while the Los Angeles area has the most year-round soot pollution, according to the ALA. Sooty air showed a "general decline" since the ALA's 2005 report, largely...

Our planet's air has cleared up in the past decade or two, allowing more sunshine to reach the ground, say two studies in Science this week. Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent. That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming. More sunlight will...

Aid workers tending to the ravaged islands and coastlines of southern Asia say a big concern is an outbreak of malaria and other waterborne diseases.... Which reminds us of a just-out World Health Organization report anticipating a shortage in a key antimalarial drug.... This news about treatments wouldn't be so devastating but for the fact that the international groups in charge still can't get malaria prevention under control. And that's the real tragedy. A blight that has been all but eliminated in the West, malaria still claims between one million and two million lives every year in the underdeveloped world....

Greece lags in emissions trade The European Union will launch its emissions trading scheme in February2005. But Greece, which missed an important deadline for joining last March,is racing to finish in time for the kickoff. Heavy penalties will ensue if they fail COSTIS STAMBOLIS The European Union is set to launch its pioneering emissions trading scheme early next year, in compliance with Kyoto protocol requirements. Greece is the only European Union country that still has not submitted to Brussels its national emissions proposal. The deadline for national proposals was March 31. Member plans are essential for an EU directive which...

A Clear Mistake By Kay Jones and Ben Lieberman The Clear Skies Initiative, President Bush's big environmental bill targeting power plant emissions, appears to be stalled in Congress. In an effort to get around this impasse, the administration now plans to implement similar provisions via EPA regulations rather than legislation. Either way, this Republican attempt to go green will prove to be both bad policy and bad politics. The plan focuses on coal-fired utility emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and mercury. It would expand upon the so-called cap and trade provisions for SOx under the existing Clean...

<p>A south Sacramento County neighborhood hit by fears of a childhood leukemia cluster appears to be a hot spot for the metal tungsten, an environmental contaminant of emerging cancer concern, according to a tree-ring study commissioned by The Bee.</p> <p>Two University of Arizona scientists who ran the study say in an unpublished paper that their findings mark "an important discovery that justifies continued research on the Calvine-Florin childhood leukemia neighborhood as well as on clusters of childhood leukemia elsewhere."</p>

<p>ABBOTT-TURKEY RUN MINE -- The Gold Rush spirit still lingers in the air of this 130-year-old quicksilver mine, where prospectors once extracted mercury and then hauled it to the Sierra for the processing of gold.</p> <p>But history isn't the only thing that oozes from this abandoned Lake County mine. Every time it rains, toxic mercury gushes from a mountain of spent ore and dumps into nearby Cache Creek. From there it flows to the Sacramento River, adding to the contamination that taints fish from the Sierra to the San Francisco Bay.</p>

Study: Calif. City Has Worst Air in U.S. CHARLOTTE, N.C. - A national air pollution study found that Riverside, Calif., has the nation's worst air quality, with an average of 148 unhealthy air days a year. The next four cities on the list were all in California: Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles-Long Beach and Sacramento. The Charlotte area has the 11th worst air quality in the nation, the second time this year the area has appeared on a bad air list, the Washington-based Surface Transportation Policy Project said Tuesday. The American Lung Association in the spring said the area has the...

Wires dangle from the bow of the boat like octopus tentacles, sending electrical current into the water and stunning the fish, which rise ghostlike on their sides, gills slowly moving in calm final breathing. That's when the "fishermen" scoop them up as the day's catch. From Our Advertiser This is not a B movie. It's the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality collecting Willamette River fish and testing them for mercury content. The DEQ has spent the summer testing fish tissues for mercury levels as part of a broader effort to set maximum pollution levels for individual waterways and devise a...

Business Meets Its Match U.S. corporations get their way at home. But the old charm isn't working in the Old World. For decades the American chemical industry has put tens of thousands of substances on the market and into the environment with little interference from the U.S. government. What a surprise, then, to come up against the new Europe. The European Union, concerned that it does not have health or environmental data on the majority of the compounds now in use, is crafting legislation that by 2005 will require the industry to conduct extensive safety tests on 30,000 common...

<p>Federal officials are no longer calling on California to repeal a law that exempts large farms from air pollution monitoring permits.</p> <p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which publicly favored repeal last month, now says it seeks only an amendment so "major" farm sources could be compelled to get permits.</p>

NYT Snippit.... 96 % of the hydrogen produced today is created from fossil fuels, natural gas, oil and coal. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/weekinreview/02LIZZ.html