Free Republic

America’s energy sources, like booming oil and crumbling coal, have defied projections and historical precedents over the last decade. ... unexpectedly, ... In 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that in 2019, the U.S. would be producing about six million barrels of oil a day. The reality? We're now producing 12 million barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, EIA projected oil prices would be more than $100 a barrel. They're currently hovering around $60 a barrel. What’s happening: A pair of extraction methods — horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — have unlocked far more oil and gas than experts...

Greta Thunberg apologized Saturday after saying that politicians should be put "against the wall” after some critics alleged that the teen climate activist was advocating for violence against officials. “Yesterday I said we must hold our leaders accountable and unfortunately said “put them against the wall”. That’s Swenglish: “att ställa någon mot väggen” (to put someone against the wall) means to hold someone accountable,” Thunberg tweeted. “That’s what happens when you improvise speeches in a second language. But of course I apologise if anyone misunderstood this. I can not enough express the fact that I - as well as the...

Americans remain shaky on the details of climate science even as they have grown increasingly concerned about human activity warming the Earth, according to a national poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) that probed the public’s understanding of climate change. The rising alarm is one of the poll’s most dramatic findings. In just five years, the percentage of people calling climate change a “crisis” has jumped from 23 percent to 38 percent. More than 3 in 4 U.S. adults and teenagers alike agree that humans are influencing the climate. The overwhelming majority of them said...

Top U.N. environment officials say countries have procrastinated for too long and should start making steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions immediately, or risk missing agreed targets for limiting global warming. A report, published days before governments gather in Madrid for an annual meeting on climate change, showed the amount of planet-heating gases being pumped into the atmosphere hitting a new high last year, despite a near-global pledge to reduce them. While much of the increase came from emerging economies such as China and India, some of those emissions are the result of manufacturing outsourced from developed countries. “We need...

A warmer than usual winter is forecast for much of the southern and western United States, but the northern and eastern U.S. will be shivering, according to an updated winter outlook released Thursday by The Weather Company, an IBM Business.Additionally, NOAA's winter outlook indicates that parts of the flood-weary Northern Plains and Midwest might see a wetter than average December through February. Based on The Weather Company's outlook, temperatures are expected to be near or above average for much of the South and West, but parts of the North and East won't be so lucky. Temperatures there are projected to...

Mitt Romney joins bipartisan Senate climate change solutions group FILE - Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, speaks at the Sutherland Institute in Salt Lake City on Monday, Aug. 19, 2019. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, speaks at the Sutherland Institute in Salt Lake City on Monday, Aug. 19, 2019. SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Mitt Romney has joined a bipartisan Senate group that aims to find answers to climate change. The Senate Climate Solutions Caucus, led by Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Mike Braun, R-Ind., consists of an equal number or Republicans and Democrats. Romney said it would serve as a starting...

Back in the spring, he was accused of deceiving viewers when he claimed, in his Netflix show Our Planet, that walruses were falling off Siberian clifftops as a result of climate change. This was shown to be untrue by Canadian biologist and mammal expert Dr Susan Crockford, who described the abundant scientific literature, dating back many decades, showing that walruses have always taken to the land, and even fallen from clifftops. She also pointed out that the footage Attenborough used to make his case seemed to have come from a well-documented incident when walruses had been driven over cliffs by...

Those who leave their energy-guzzling multi-million-dollar mansions when they fly off on their private jets to save-the-planet climate change conferences like to ease their consciences and explain their hypocrisy by pointing to their carbon offsets like paying for trees to be planted somewhere that might mature in a hundred years or so. There are a lot of trees in California and a good number of them are on fire, thanks to environmental regulations and policies that are supposed to protect the environment but are in fact destroying it. The irony in California that the very trees that are supposed to...

On Monday, President Trump took the step he promised in 2017 to officially withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change, which every other country on Earth has signed. This is not America first; once again, it’s America isolated.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and his merry band of Green Little Dealers offer a national alarm bell for the national Green New Deal proposal. ... Advocates for free markets, affordable energy for everyday people, and expanding our miraculous energy independence must closely watch what’s happening among the states. Case in point: Colorado’s Green Little Deal ... directly attack key industries such as coal, oil and gas, and automobiles while giving considerable power to government to regulate and transition workers, all disregarding economic realities. ... Polis has established Offices of “Just Transition” and “Future at Work.” ... The big difference between...

Between January 9 and February 4 this year, 29 sperm whales got stranded and died on English, German and Dutch beaches. Environmentalists and the news media offered multiple explanations – except the most obvious and likely one: offshore wind farms. Indeed, that area has the world’s biggest concentration of offshore wind turbines, and there is ample evidence that their acoustic pollution can interfere with whale communication and navigation. However, Britain’s Guardian looked for answers everywhere but in the right place. That’s not surprising, as it tends to support wind energy no matter the cost to people or the environment. After...

Harrison Ford is one of Hollywood’s most famous climate crusaders. He owns multiple extravagant homes, plus a reported 12 private planes, nine motorcycles and six gasoline-powered automobiles. His private plane collection includes two gas-guzzling corporate jets. Even though his opulent lifestyle depends upon copious amounts of fossil fuel energy, he speaks forcefully about his commitment to fight climate change. ... His multiple real-estate holdings include a 14,000 sq. ft. megamansion in the heart of one of the most exclusive areas of Los Angeles. He also owns a magnificent Jackson Hole, Wyoming estate, the plans for which he sketched out in...

a group of Democratic senators took cash from a Ukraine lobbyist to push Ukrainian gas interests at the same time the Democrats are pushing the Trump-Ukraine yarn. ... Remember Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's business partner? .. previously been a top fundraiser for John Kerry, who was Secretary of State at the time. And soon after Devon and Hunter joined the Burisma Board, the company channeled $90,000 to a lobbying firm called ML Strategies, which was headed by none other than David Leiter, John Kerry's former chief of staff. That's handy because then-Secretary of State John Kerry himself has visited Ukraine...

Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom. Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days. Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning. Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California. While they try to blame climate...

Greta Thunberg became the poster child for climate hysteria and fraud by sailing across the Atlantic in a supposedly “zero-carbon” yacht, the Malizia II, which in fact was made out of petroleum products from stem to stern ... Malizia II, like the rest of the yachts in the Imoca 60 class, is constructed from high-tech carbon fiber composites to make it ultra light and fast. It is the ultimate play thing of the wealthy elite. These boats are made of hydrocarbons, not to mention all the energy it took to make them. Carbon fiber composites are primarily made from propane...

A gas shortage threatens the Long Island region,” bleat six Long Island state senators, all Democrats, in a letter pleading for approval of a pipeline proposed to fix the problem — belatedly admitting that the policies they’ve long favored don’t work for their own constituents. This year, Sens. Todd Kaminsky, John Brooks, James Gaughran, Anna Kaplan, Monica Martinez and Kevin Thomas all voted for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Green New Deal law, whose very purpose is to further crimp energy supplies, and for a $100 million hike in taxes on energy. And, as Senate GOP leader John Flanagan (their fellow Long...

DES MOINES, Iowa – On September 19, 2019, a federal grand jury returned an Indictment charging defendants, Jessica Rae Reznicek and Ruby Katherine Montoya, with one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, four counts of use of fire in the commission of a felony, and four counts of malicious use of fire, announced United States Attorney Marc Krickbaum. Montoya was recently arrested in the District of Arizona and detained pending court proceedings to determine her appearance in the Southern District of Iowa. Reznicek appeared in Des Moines on October 1, 2019 and was conditionally released pending trial. Trial...

Michigan’s electric utilities gamble that the reliability of service won’t collapse. Consumers Energy would have to double the number of wind turbines currently operating in this state to replace the electricity produced by just one of the coal- and gas-fired power plants it intends to close as part of its plans to rely more on renewable sources. The problem, however, is that those additional turbines only spin about one-third of the time, leaving a big energy gap for the households and businesses that rely on the company for their electricity. .. regulated utilities and their vendors operate 1,107 industrial wind...

A major scientific paper, which claimed to have found rapid warming in the oceans as a result of manmade global warming, has been withdrawn after an amateur climate scientist found major errors in its statistical methodology. The paper, from a team led by Laure Resplandy of Princeton University, had received widespread uncritical publicity in the mainstream media when it was published because of its apparently alarming implications for the planet. However, within days of its publication in October 2018, independent scientist Nic Lewis found several serious flaws.

Dr. Mototaka Nakamura: "Ad hoc representation of clouds may be the greatest source of uncertainty in climate prediction. A profound fact is that only a very small change - so small that it cannot be measured accurately - in the global cloud characteristics can completely offset the warming effect of the doubled atmospheric CO2. [Long essay, but worth reading to the end.]