Free Republic

President Obama declared Tuesday that next week’s climate change summit in Paris would be a “powerful rebuke” to terrorists, speaking alongside French President Francois Hollande at a joint news conference. “Next week, I will be joining President Hollande and world leaders in Paris for the global climate conference,” Obama said during his prepared remarks, which focused mostly on the efforts to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). “What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for...

Chicago gets its largest November snowfall in 120 years. The season's first snowfall dropped as much as 17 inches across Chicago's northern suburbs, and the total of 11.2 inches at O'Hare International Airport made it the largest November snowfall in 120 years. ... According to the weather service, this was the second-largest November snowstorm, behind only a 12-inch snowfall Nov. 25-26, 1895. This month is catapulted to the fourth snowiest November on record with more than a week remaining. The three snowiest Novembers were: 1940 with 14.8 inches, 1895 with 14.5 inches and 1951 with 14.3 inches.

Williams .. asks specifically, how this attack would impact the messaging. ... Because that is the important thing when hostages are still being held and gunfire is still being exchanged. How will the global warming conference's PR campaign go on? MSNBC.

Energy: The resident wants to decarbonize the planet by killing fossil-fuel production and its high-paying jobs. Almost no other nation is following his lead despite the promises that will be made at the Paris climate summit. Last week we learned in a Reuters report that Asia will build 500 coal-burning electric generation plants this year alone. An additional 1,000 are planned in China, India, Japan, Indonesia and other countries. The latest projections are that 40% of the added power generation in Southeast Asia by 2040 will be coal-fired. Does this sound like a continent that's taking the alarm bells of...

Al Gore .. has levied his global warming activism from a net worth of $700,000 in 2000 into an estimated net worth of $172.5 million by 2015. He is not alone in his financial endeavor. Funding of science, in this particular case, climate change science, is dominated by the federal government. We assert that this will cause recipients of [government] grants to publish findings that are in-line with government policy preferences (i.e., do not bite the hand that feeds you ... Studies that receive financial support from the public sector do not have to disclose it as a conflict of...

It's no secret that many U.S. environmental groups have become more strident and ideological during the Obama residency. But you may be surprised just how extreme they have become. In early October, a national network of environmental groups - called Stop the Frack Attack (STFA) - held a summit in Colorado to discuss their campaign strategies. The STFA alliance is led by Earthworks and includes other well-known national activist groups, such as the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Food & Water Watch. Dozens of smaller groups, which routinely serve as the face of national groups in state- and...

A popular weatherman announced Saturday evening he has been sacked by leading French news channel France Télévisions for publishing a book which accused top climate change experts of misleading the world about the threat of global warming. Philippe Verdier, a household name in France for his daily weather reports on the France 2 channel, announced in an online video that he had received a letter of dismissal. "“My book ‘Climate Investigation’ was published one month ago. It got me banned from the air waves,” said the weatherman, who was put “on leave” from the TV station on October 12. “I...

Judge stalls approved Montana coal mine expansion in 2nd successful suit citing climate change. The U.S. Interior Department should not have approved the expansion of a southeastern Montana coal mine without taking a closer look at its effect on the environment, a federal judge said about a lawsuit arguing the government ignored coal's contributions to climate change. Environmental groups sued the Interior Department after it approved an expansion of the Spring Creek Coal mine in 2012. The case marks the second time conservationists have used worries over climate change to successfully challenge approval of a coal mine after it had...

First, United Nations officials label bacon and deli meats as carcinogens, and now scientists are claiming that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide are not only heating the planet, they’re making people dumber. A new study by the Harvard School of Public Health claims “carbon dioxide (CO2) has a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making,” according to ThinkProgress, a left-wing advocacy website. Former Vice President Al Gore wasted no time tweeting out ThinkProgress’ in-depth article, trying to link higher carbon dioxide levels to lower cognition in humans. The Harvard study exposed 24 people to office environments with varying...

A couple of days ago, there was a quite successful thread here entitled Top Physicist Freeman Dyson: Obama 'Took the Wrong Side' on Climate Change. As an admirer and follower of Professor Dyson, I enjoyed it greatly, and posted several items on it. That thread got me interested in Dyson once again, and in looking for Dyson material I found this remarkable lecture on YouTube. I believe it is worth anyone's time to listen to in its entirety. At a little more than an hour in length, it is a bit long for one sitting, but I am sure most...

Open the Books, a government watchdog organization has put out a ,report that reveals that the EPA spends millions on buying military equipment, including guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear. Forgive me, but when I think of the EPA, modern warfare does not become the first image that crosses my mind. I have a real hard time wrapping my mind around the EPA needing amphibious assault ships. And can they even be operated in waters polluted by millions of gallons of orange mine sludge? I admit I am somewhat curious to what...

On September 24, 2015, the federal Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) published a Notice of Proposed Withdrawal (“BLM notice”), proposing to withdraw from mineral location and entry federal lands identified as “sagebrush focal areas” in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. The BLM notice commences a two-year temporary segregation period, prohibiting location and entry of new mining claims on BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands in these sagebrush focal areas. If the BLM decides to withdraw the area at the end of the segregation period, the withdrawal will last up to 20 years, but could be extended in the...

At least it was sustainable fair trade carbon neutral corruption. John Ashe, the UN General Assembly president, has been busted on corruption charges. A former president of the U.N. General Assembly "sold himself and the global institution he led" by allegedly pocketing more than $1 million in bribes to finance a luxury spending spree, according to a federal prosecutor. Ashe, 61, is accused of tax fraud in an alleged conspiracy involving five others, including a billionaire Chinese businessman and a former deputy U.N. ambassador from the Dominican Republic, according to a criminal complaint. Ashe is accused of underreporting his income...

The Fox News report that the Teamsters have decided not to endorse Hillary Clinton’s candidacy at this time, shortly after her pronouncement of her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, does not surprise and shows the peril of trying to be all things to all constituencies. On the one hand, there is a need to placate environmentalists and climate change true believers who oppose the pipeline from Canada. Among them is billionaire Tom Steyer, an eco-zealot who has pledged his fortune in support of Democratic candidates who want to repeal the Industrial Revolution who want us to rely on solar...

Progressive pundits increasingly envision the 2016 presidential election as a “last chance,” as one activist phrased it, to stop “climate change catastrophe.” As this agenda gets ever more radical, the prominence of climate change in the election will grow ever more obvious. The key here is that the green left increasingly does not want to limit or change the mix of fossil fuels, but eliminate them entirely, the faster the better. ... Climate activists such as hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer increasingly couch their policies on theological grounds, one reason why the pope’s intervention was so timely. Stark self-interest is...

While delivering the first address from a pontiff to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Pope Francis touched on topics ranging from the plight of immigrants to climate change and the death penalty. Many of his comments were lightly delivered and unlikely to elicit much controversy, though the reaction might be different if they were given by another world leader.

White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett is quietly working behind the scenes to build a coalition of major U.S. corporations to back President Barack Obama’s goal of hashing out a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the upcoming United Nations summit in Paris.The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a letter that outlines how, by the end of June, Obama is looking to build a coalition of businesses to show support for UN climate talks. After that, the White House will then try to grow this group of businesses to 250 in the run up to the Paris talks...

The Associated Press announced on its blog today that henceforth it will refer to climate change skeptics less pejoratively, reports Mediaite. The AP explained the changes thusly: Our guidance is to use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science and to avoid the use of skeptics or deniers. [emphasis in original] Some background on the change: Scientists who consider themselves real skeptics – who debunk mysticism, ESP and other pseudoscience, such as those who are part of the Center for Skeptical Inquiry – complain that non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science have usurped the phrase skeptic. They...

George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla is a lead author with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and winner of numerous awards including the International Meteorological Organization Prize, the Rossby Medal of the American Meteorological Society, and the Padma Shri National Award from the President of India. He is currently president of the Institute of Global Environment and Society and a professor of Climate Dynamics. For his expertise, Shukla is amply rewarded by George Mason University with a salary over $250,000 a year. Apparently, though, this isn’t a full time job. It can’t be – because on top of...

Construction workers in California's Santa Cruz mountains were subject to a surprise delay last week when a team of archaeologists took over the site to remove an ancient whale fossil. The project site was expected to have a high potential for archaeological finds, so a monitor was assigned to the Scotts Valley development and found the fossil amid construction vehicles on Sept. 4. This project site is not the only one in California with fossils ... Since the 19th century, paleontologists have been studying the “Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed” near Bakersfield, California, where fossils and bones of ancient whales, seals,...