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The environmentalist movement was never about smog, pollution or even global warming. In the minds of naive people who fell for the propaganda, it was. But the reality was always implicit. The environmentalist movement was always about control. And shame. The “Green New Deal” has exposed the environmentalist movement for what it is. It has made the insanity explicit. If you want to sum up environmentalism, you might call it urban religion. It’s an expression of guilt. “You live in a land of plenty. It’s shameful.” Today’s environmentalists are the modern Puritans. They’re repressive, shaming and hostile to comfort and...

Pupils from around the UK went "on strike" on Friday as part of a global campaign for action on climate change. Students around the country walked out of schools to call on the government to declare a climate emergency and take active steps to tackle the problem. Organisers Youth Strike 4 Climate said protests took place in more than 60 towns and cities, with an estimated 15,000 taking part. They carried placards, some reading: "There is no planet B." The action was part of a much wider global movement, known as Schools 4 Climate Action. It began with 15-year-old Swede...

Billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Richard Branson said Thursday that taxing the rich "makes sense," arguing the extremely affluent have a responsibility to tackle some of the biggest problems in the world, including wealth disparities. "People like myself are incredibly fortunate," the Virgin Group founder told CNBC's Morgan Brennan in an interview. "I suspect there should be higher taxes for the wealthy around the world and I don't think they would object to that." Branson — with a net worth of $4.1 billion, according to Forbes — is part of the growing circle of elite business leaders questioning wealth disparity in...

Jemitias Denhere shakes his head as he explains why, despite being a specialist in soil management and crop production, he specializes in beef livestock. The district agronomist -- plants specialist -- owns 27 hectares of land in the Mwenezi area of southern Zimbabwe, a particularly arid location. Here, farmers endure extreme weather challenges such as drought and flash flooding -- and, thus, some of the highest food shortages. His cattle can exist on the little grass that remains during dry times, but to produce crops without irrigation is risky -- so he decided against it. "One year, you win; one...

Hotter summers. Colder winters. Mega-storms and massive droughts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a grim picture of how global life will change in the 21st century as a result of human-caused climate change. This week, California lawmakers drafted an Assembly Joint Resolution to support the “Green New Deal” to battle global warming now being considered in Congress. Assemblyman Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, is the primary sponsor of AJR 7. Gloria’s AJR 7 cites California’s year-round wildfire season - the Thomas Fire was a record-breaker in 2017, the Mendocino-Complex Fire shattered that record in 2018 - as one example...

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Labor unions say they are withholding support for a Green New Deal unveiled by Democrats last week to transition the American economy away from fossil fuels, arguing the loosely-defined plan could kill jobs if its architects aren’t careful. The cool response from unions underscores the challenge facing Democratic presidential hopefuls who support aggressive action on climate change but must also win back the blue-collar voters that swept President Donald Trump to victory in 2016. Democratic presidential hopeful Senators Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren have already thrown their support behind it. The resolution’s backers say the plan...

A James Cook University scientist says the last coastal stronghold of an iconic predator, the endangered Bengal tiger, could be destroyed by climate change and rising sea levels over the next 50 years. "Fewer than 4,000 Bengal tigers are alive today," said JCU's Professor Bill Laurance, a co-author of the study. "That's a really low number for the world's biggest cat, which used to be far more abundant but today is mainly confined to small areas of India and Bangladesh," he said. "Spanning more than 10,000 square kilometres, the Sundarbans region of Bangladesh and India is the biggest mangrove forest...

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Monday refuted President Donald Trump's questioning whether climate change is real because it was snowing heavily when she announced this weekend she's running for president. "Okay. That is so wrong," Klobuchar said on ABC's "Good Morning America" in her first network TV interview since declaring, pushing back on the president's tweet that it was "bad timing" that she talked "proudly" of fighting global warming "while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures." "I'm sorry if it still snows in the world but the point is that we know climate change...

Let's consider some real news, for a change: Last year was officially proclaimed the fourth-warmest on record; scientists predict that melting ice in Antarctica and Greenland could not only raise sea levels but further destabilize weather patterns; and progressive members of Congress are proposing a "Green New Deal," the first policy framework ambitious enough to meet the challenge of global warming. Climate change is the biggest, most important story of our time. Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will judge us by how well we meet the challenge, and so far we are failing. Miserably. It's not about whether global warming is...

Our health system is already overburdened, and extreme climate change could put it over the edge. And it will unfortunately be our most vulnerable communities - low income communities, communities of color, and places where health care is already hard to come by - who will suffer the worst consequences. As a fourth-year medical student, I’ve learned plenty about caring for patients with common illnesses and injuries. But as a native of fire-ravaged Northern California, and a student in Pennsylvania - where I hear regularly about communities torn apart by the natural gas industry - I can’t help but worry...

Climate change is seen as the greatest threat to international security, according to a sweeping new survey of public opinion in 26 countries that also cites worries about cyberattacks, terrorism, North Korea, Russia – and the United States. The findings from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, published on Sunday, show that the people surveyed in 13 of the countries view climate change as the top international threat. "Overall we've seen that general climate concerns and specifically global climate change had been at the top of the list or near the top of the list along with terrorism in the five...

Klobuchar announced her candidacy on Sunday in Minneapolis, where scores of supporters stood out in steady snowfall and frigid temperatures. President Trump on Sunday mocked Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for launching her presidential campaign in wintry conditions in Minnesota, tweeting that she "looked like a Snowman."

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) prevented an attempt by Russian intelligence to recruit a Ukrainian citizen, offering a US$2,000 reward, to set on fire a temple of what was until recently called the Moscow Patriarchate, aiming to sow tensions and discord on religious grounds, provoking further destabilization. According to the SBU press service, security operatives revealed that Russian intelligence and Moscow-controlled "security services in the occupied parts of Donbas had been working to recruit Ukrainian nationals who would commit arson attacks on temples operated by Orthodox priests of the former UOC-MP. The targeted Ukrainian was promised to receive the...

A record number of Americans, 7 out of 10, believe that climate change is real, and the majority understand that human activity is largely to blame, according to a January poll. But still leaves 30% who are skeptical, and there are still key politicians like President Donald Trump who regularly tweet their doubts. Rather than lobby them with more facts, perhaps climate scientists should send naysayers to the movies. Ever since the 1973 cult classic "Soylent Green" introduced audiences to the food shortages climate change will bring, movie makers and television show producers have been scaring people about it. Apple...

In 70 years, San Francisco as we know it could look drastically different. Gentrification, development and the other forces of urban change we fret about may be mere trifles compared to the drastic effects of climate change, including the rise of sea levels and erosion, scientists say. By 2100, rising sea levels could displace more than 480,000 people along the California coast and result in property losses upwards of $100 billion if no preventative measures are taken, according to a 2009 study by the California Climate Change Center. The study found populations in the San Francisco Bay Area are especially...

Global warming could temporarily hit 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time between now and 2023, according to a long-term forecast by the Met Office. Meteorologists said there was a 10% chance of a year in which the average temperature rise exceeds 1.5C, which is the lowest of the two Paris agreement targets set for the end of the century. Climatologists stressed this did not mean the world had broken the Paris agreement 80 years ahead of schedule because international temperature targets are based on 30-year averages. The Met Office said previous results had demonstrated the accuracy of such...

Now we tackle, using newly available data, what may have caused the fictitious temperature trend in the latter decades of the 20th century. We first look at ocean data. There was a great shift, after 1980, in the way Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) were measured (see Goretzki and Kennedy et al. JGR 2011, Fig. 2), "Sources of SST data." Note the drastic changes between 1980 and 2000 as global floating drifter buoys geographic changes increasingly replaced opportunities for sampling SST with buckets. Data taken from floating drifter buoys increased from zero to 60% between 1980 and 2000. But such buoys...

BELGRADE – Weekly protest walks, taking place since 8 December 2018, have become the most serious challenge to the rule of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic so far. The protests, which are supported but not formally organised by the opposition parties, have spread to more than 20 cities and towns across the country... One of the protests took place in Kosovska Mitrovica, the largest city of the Serb-majority Northern Kosovo, which is governed by Vucic’s political allies. The protests, organised under the title “One of the five million” (a reference to the initial reaction of President Vucic, in which he said...

BURLINGTON, VT. - A new study from the University of Vermont says snowmobile riders in Vermont are taking notice that fewer days are good for riding. The number of days with more than an inch of snow in Vermont has dropped from 130 in 1960 to 75 today. Vermont Public Radio reports the study surveyed over 1,400 members of the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers and found that 45 percent have noticed a decline in the amount of time they are able to ride snowmobiles. Lead author Elizabeth Perry says a third of the respondents have decreased the amount of...