Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took more than $11,000 in campaign donations from the CEO of a Tampa refrigerant company backed by China, according to a report.According to a report in the Miami Herald, the donation was “just the latest in years” of financial support that the company, iGas USA, has given DeSantis. The report said that DeSantis even held a rally at the company’s Tampa complex.The report said:The rally and contributions are part of a recent wave of political giving by iGas and entities associated with its CEO, Xianbin (Ben) Meng. All told, the companies and employees...

President Joe Biden on Thursday signed an international agreement that compels the United States and other countries to limit use of hydrofluorocarbons, highly potent greenhouse gases commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning that are far more powerful than carbon dioxide. ...The agreement should lead to tens of thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in exports as clean technologies are developed to replace HFCs around the world, Zaidi said. The Senate approved a largely symbolic amendment by GOP Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Mike Lee of Utah declaring that China is not a developing country and should...

The Senate has voted to ratify a global climate treaty that will phase down the use and production of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, the climate-warming chemicals widely used in air conditioning and refrigeration. The Senate voted 69-27 on Wednesday to move forward the 2016 Kigali Amendment, an amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol climate treaty that dramatically curbs the use of HFCs, which are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide at heating up the Earth. Forty-eight Democrats and 21 Republicans voted in favor; four members of the Senate did not vote. “This is a win-win in our fight against...

Air conditioners and refrigerators pose as big a threat to "life on the planet" as the threat of terrorism, Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday. Kerry was in Vienna negotiating a global climate deal to phase out chemicals used as refrigerants in basic household and commercial appliances such as air conditioning and refrigerators, called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. The chemicals are a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions that many scientists blame for contributing to global warming. Kerry made the remarks as part of a pep talk for negotiators working through the weekend to amend a 1987 treaty called the...

Crusade against carbon dioxide threatens the environmentTechnologies advanced as the solution to the purported global warming problem are catching fire — just not in the way intended. Bureaucrats are quickly learning that their regulatory offerings designed to entreat Mother Nature into bestowing cooler temperatures upon the planet have created environmental hazards of their own. It’s well-known that the fluorescent light bulbs being foisted on a reluctant public spread deadly mercury when dropped. In March, the administration will be free to enforce a federally imposed ban on the manufacturing of warm, pleasing and affordable 100-watt light bulbs. This will force more...

Most of us have gotten e-mails about bizarre stories that are known as urban legends. Sometimes they’re totally bogus. Sometimes there’s a shred of truth to them, but the story is mostly exaggeration. Recently, though, I got one that proved to be true, completely true, terribly true. It was about a police officer in Ohio who used cans of compressed air to blow the dust off computer parts. The canned air isn’t expensive, but it isn’t cheap, $10 for a pack of three cans, so the man was a little upset when he found that his son and his friends...