Free Republic

What is shocking is that anyone is surprised by the news that Al Gore's Silver Spring Networks company is benefiting from some $560 million in grants given by the energy department. Did anyone actually think that Al Gore was going to turn a profit by selling cow fart catalytic converters or solar ovens to people on the street? The fact is, the average person doesn't buy Al Gore's load of crap so he has to depend on like-minded wackos in the government who will make sure that his investments were not made in vain.

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers. The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive in St. John’s today for an 11-day visit that will bring them to Hamilton Thursday. It’s the 15th time Charles has toured Canada, but the first time with his wife Camilla by his side. One of the first things the couple must deal with is H1N1 flu... Charles is also up against an apparent apathy that could see him received with at least as much indifference as enthusiasm. A leaked poll, phone-in shows and online comments have suggested growing ho-hum feelings ... “Just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse around...

A SENIOR CSIRO environmental economist has gone public to accuse the science body of trying to gag his report attacking the Federal Government's climate change policies. The paper, by Clive Spash, criticises the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and argues that direct legislation or a tax on carbon is needed... Dr. Spash also wrote that the economic theory underpinning emissions trading schemes was far removed from the reality ... He said trading schemes were ineffective ... He claims the CSIRO had tried to block the publication of the report, despite it being internationally peer reviewed and accepted by the journal New...

Environmentalism: As polls show belief in global warming is dropping, a new study suggests that dogs and cats, like people, are a plague upon the earth. They say people should have edible pets. Here, kitty, kitty. A new Pew Research Center study conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 says the number of Americans who think there's solid evidence the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades has plummeted from 71% in April 2008 to 57% today. Over the same period, there's been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising...

Climate Change: As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming? Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out — in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year. It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to...

It's truly extraordinary how every left-of-centre journalist in the country has managed to become an instant expert on the arcane subjects of global warming and the science of climate change. Imagine, for example, if some average Canadian hack who had never studied the Middle East suddenly announced that he was an authority on Israel-Palestine, knew which side was right and knew how to solve all of the associated problems. This, however, is what we are told every day when it comes to the fashion of sounding green. The more sympathy we can exhibit for Al Gore's polar bear or David...

An internal memo produced by Bernstein Research in June described how Mr. Rowe met with investors to rejoice that the House legislation will allow Exelon to rake in additional revenue—by some estimates, up to $1.5 billion a year. Others will pay for this Exelon privilege, of course—notably, Midwestern customers of traditional coal utilities who will see their energy prices double. But hey, all's fair in love and lobbying. ...Let's also not forget that Chicago-based Exelon and employees, including Mr. Rowe, contributed tens of thousands of dollars for their home-city presidential aspirant. And that Mr. Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, was...

For Utilities, the Future Is Now Generating power from the sun and burying carbon underground are two old concepts on the cusp of reality. By Jim Ostroff, Associate Editor, The Kiplinger Letter September 29, 2009 National Security Space Office, study on space based power Note two exciting energy technology developments whose times have come: Space based power plants and a coal burning facility that emits no carbon dioxide. Both are likely to be key elements in helping electric utilities meet expected stringent U.S. emissions requirements without having to mothball a large number of existing coal fired power plants. Power plants...

Former Vice President Al Gore and current White House climate change czar Carol Browner are warning companies and lawmakers that the courts will step in to regulate greenhouse gases if Congress fails to act. "All of the discussion has been about the president and the Congress," Gore told journalists at a U.N. press conference Tuesday. "We have a third branch of government: the courts."

"If that global allowance was distributed according to population levels, many developed nations would face almost immediate carbon bankruptcy. With 4.6 per cent of global population, the US would receive a 35 billion tonne allowance between now and 2050, which it would use up in around six years at current rates. The European Union's budget would run out in 12 years and China's in 24. "It is clear that the industrialised countries must carry out rapid and comprehensive decarbonisation if they wish to present themselves as credible advocates of global climate protection," concludes the council. The US carbon budget would...

UC-SD Green Gone Wild by: Deborah Lambert, September 16, 2009 Do students entering U.C. San Diego this year have any idea what awaits them? Those who read Pat Jacoby’s article in UCSD News will learn how the green movement has transformed the school into a “next generation array of green innovations ranging from Econauts and drought tolerant bio-swale landscaping to organic foods and ‘hydration stations’ that eliminate the need for disposable water bottles.” “UC San Diego is a living laboratory for climate change solutions,” said Mark Cunningham, the school’s director of Housing, Dining and Hospitality, adding that “if we...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced plans for a new carbon tax aimed at combating global warming. The tax will be introduced next year and will cover the use of oil, gas and coal, he said. The new tax will be 17 euros (£15) per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide (CO2). It will be phased in gradually. It will apply to households as well as enterprises, but not to the heavy industries and power firms included in the EU's emissions trading scheme. Most electricity in France - excluded from the new carbon tax - is nuclear generated. Mr Sarkozy said...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday unveiled a new carbon tax to help combat global warming, calling it a "fiscal revolution" and overriding strong public opposition to the plan. The new levy on oil, gas and coal consumption by households and businesses will come into effect next year, making France the biggest economy yet to impose a straight-up carbon tax. "It is time to create green taxation," Sarkozy said in an address in Culoz, a town near the French border with Switzerland. "This is a major fiscal shift, an important innovation," he said. "It is the first step of a...

CAP YOUR CO2 GENERATORS! Ahh wait 1 while I open another CO2 generator and pour it into an open glass filled with ice. I wonder how much a can of soda pop will cost after the CO2 tax is applied... how about that CO2 fire extinguisher, a block of dry ice for the hunting shack...beer anyone or how about some bubbley! America will reap what it sews.

Don't Exhale. EPA Expected to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Dangerous Pollutant The Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the next few weeks to declare that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a pollutant, a move that would require the federal government to regulate them -- even without legislation. FOXNews.com Friday, August 28, 2009 Don't exhale. That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases a dangerous pollutant, a move -- expected in the next couple weeks -- that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions....

Junk Science: The EPA may be considering closing the watchdog office that exposed the flimsy evidence of man-caused warming. So much for the administration's promise to "restore science to its rightful place."Recently we commented on the plight of Dr. Allen Carlin, the EPA senior research analyst at the National Center for Environmental Economics who dared to say, in essence, that emperor Al Gore and his environmental sycophants at the Environmental Protection Agency wore no clothes. The EPA had been working on an "endangerment finding" that would say carbon dioxide, rather than being the basis for all life on earth, was...

WASHINGTON — At a bend in the Ohio River, a bulky new device is being attached to a 30-year-old coal plant near the small town of New Haven, W.Va. The device is being housed in a building four stories tall and bigger than a football field. A 150-foot-tall exhaust stack — so wide that it would take six adults with their arms fully stretched to reach around it — will reach into the sky. And pipelines will run out of the building and into saline aquifers two miles underground. The entire contraption will start up as early as September. The...

Climate Change: NASA's James Hansen leads a protest against a District of Columbia power plant in the middle of a snowstorm. Meanwhile, a scientist fired by Al Gore says we need to emit more carbon dioxide, not less.Speaking before Bill Clinton's Global Initiative in New York City last Nov. 2, Gore advocated the concept of civil disobedience to fight climate change. "I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore said to loud applause. Following Gore's lead, a...

I am wondering: Obama and Al Gore think huge carbon footprints are sinful. But they apparently endorsed a private jet flying all the way across the ocean with one guy...to pick up two women. Can we measure how much carbon was put into our atmosphere for these liberals' jaunt?

Pine trees grown for 12 years in air one-and-a-half times richer in carbon dioxide than today's levels produced twice as many seeds of at least as good a quality as those growing under normal conditions, a Duke University-led research team reported Aug. 3 at a national ecology conference.

The price of coal and efforts to control its emissions keep energy costs spiraling higher. American Electric Power, parent of Appalachian Power Co., reports that it is "the largest purchaser of coal in the Western Hemisphere." For Appalachian, coal-fired power plants generate about 98 percent of the electricity it delivers to customers in a territory that includes portions of Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. For AEP companywide, coal fuels about 70 percent of power generation. And all that coal, an increasingly controversial fuel, helps explain the upward spiral of Appalachian's costs for complying with environmental regulations. Appalachian and AEP report...

No one knows exactly how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions, but a new study this week suggests scientists' best predictions about global warming might be incorrect. The study, which appears in Nature Geoscience, found that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth's ancient past. The study contains an analysis of published records from a period of rapid climatic warming about 55 million years ago AKA the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM. "In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in...

LOS ANGELES – A piece of rocket hardware failed to separate during the launch of a NASA climate satellite earlier this year, causing it crash back to Earth, according to an accident summary released Friday. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory splashed into the ocean near Antarctica on Feb. 24, minutes after lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a Taurus rocket. A team of space experts appointed by NASA to investigate the mishap said the nose cone that protects the satellite did not come off as planned. Although the investigators could not pinpoint the exact cause for the...

It's possible that no concept in history has ever come so far, so fast, and with so little substance behind it, as "global warming." Or, to be precise, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) - the kind caused by us puny humans rather than by that fireball that keeps the planet habitable. ...Sadly, that misallocation is about to get a whole lot bigger. If the Obama administration has its way - and it is expected to, since there's no meaningful opposition - carbon caps will soon be coming to every American town... If you're unfamiliar with the concept of a carbon cap,...

Former Vice President Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.”“I bring you good news from the U.S., “Gore said on July 7, 2009 in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by UK Times.“Just two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill,” Gore said, noting it was “very much a step in the right direction.”Gore touted the climate bill, claiming it “will dramatically increase the prospects for success” in combating what he sees as the “crisis” of man-made global warming.“But it is the...

The more we conservatives provide truth and systematically refute the liberal 'cures' for our supposed ills, the more hysterically entrenched the liberals/progressives become in perpetuating and defending their lies. The latest example is Ma'am Barbara Boxer, distinguished 'Senator' from the People's Republik of Kalifornia.

The reputation of diamond as the hardest material around is under threat. Researchers in China and the United States recently determined that two naturally occurring substances surpass diamond’s resistance to scratching and indentation. They calculated that the mineral lonsdaleite—made of carbon, like diamond—is 58 percent harder than its famous cousin. And wurtzite boron nitride beats diamond’s hardness by about 18 percent after being subjected to pressure, which alters its atomic bonds. Still, in the short term diamond will continue to dominate in practical applications such as saws, drill bits, and industrial abrasives, since the newly studied materials are extremely rare....

"CO2 is not a pollutant. In simple terms, CO2 is plant food. The green world we see around us would disappear if not for atmospheric CO2. These plants largely evolved at a time when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was many times what it is today. Indeed, numerous studies indicate the present biosphere is being invigorated by the human-induced rise of CO2. In and of itself, therefore, the increasing concentration of CO2 does not pose a toxic risk to the planet." - John R. Christy, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alabama "Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a...

...The 8 Republicans who voted FOR HR 2454 have 5 days to change their votes. ...

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill? This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

House to continue Energy Bill Debate with Possible Vote Today Later today, the House will continue general debate on the American Clean Energy & Security Act, Pres. Obama's climate change legislation. The bill centers on a renewable electicity standard, encouraging the use of renewable energy and a cap-and-trade policy.

COVENTRY, Vt. – Vermont dairy farmers Tim Maikshilo and Kristen Dellert, mindful of shrinking their carbon footprint, have changed their cows' diet to reduce the amount of gas the animals burp — dairy cows' contribution to global warming. Coventry Valley Farm is one of 15 Vermont farms working with Stonyfield Farm Inc., whose yogurt is made with their organic milk, to reduce the cows' intestinal methane by feeding them flaxseed, alfalfa, and grasses high in Omega 3 fatty acids. The gas cows belch is the dairy industry's biggest greenhouse gas contributor, research shows, most of it emitted from the front...

The National Debt Clock has been ticking the amount of the U.S. government’s debt since 1989 to show just how much money the taxpayers are in for. But now, global warming activists have seized upon the concept. According to CNBC “Closing Bell” host Maria Bartiromo, Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB) has launched its Carbon Counter to track the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the earth’s atmosphere outside Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station, near the Empire State Building. “A couple of blocks away from the National Debt counter in New York’s Time Square lies a new display,” Bartiromo said on her...

Before the US House of Representatives, June 4, 2009 Madam Speaker, before voting on the "cap-and-trade'' legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists: "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane,...

Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is the most comprehensive objective compilation of science on climate change ever published. It offers a “second opinion” to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007. Unlike that report, Climate Change Reconsidered finds global warming is not a crisis, and never was. Principal findings of the book include the following: Climate models suffer from numerous deficiencies and shortcomings that could alter even the very sign (plus or minus, warming or cooling) of earth’s projected temperature response...

The Skeptic's Handbook in an EXCELLENT 16 page handbook on refuting the claims that CO2 causes Global Warming. Click here to download the .pdf file.

CEN NYC: “The Ramifications of Carbon Mitigation Paradigms: Can the Public Win when Politics Overshadow the Science of Engineering?” featuring Power Plant Developer, Adam Victor ‘74 At this event we’ll explore Adam’s experiences as an energy entrepreneur and passionate supporter of a stronger, more self sufficient USA. Adam is what’s called a PPP or Private Power Producer (i.e. he builds his own power plants). We will discuss what Adam calls the “politicization of engineering” as well as what he views as a necessity for energy solutions for our world. We came across Adam after he was recently interviewed by The...

Global warming alarmists are fond of invoking the authority of experts against the skepticism of supposedly amateur detractors -- a.k.a. "deniers." So when one of those experts says that a recent report on the effects of climate change is "worse than fiction, it is a lie," the alarmists should, well, be alarmed. The latest contretemps pits former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, now president of the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, against Roger Pielke, Jr., an expert in disaster trends at the University of Colorado. Mr. Annan's outfit issued a lengthy report late last month warning that climate change-induced disasters, such...

Climate Change: NASA predicts the lowest sunspot activity since 1928. Is a major solar storm in the offing? While we worry about man-made warming, the sun may soon show us who's boss... But this dry statistic has more significance for the earth and its climate than all of Al Gore's gloom and doom about tailpipe emissions and rising sea levels. Whether the warm-mongers like it or not, the sun rules earth's climate — always has and always will.

An environmental start-up backed by Al Gore's venture capital firm aims to take advantage of coming U.S. climate change legislation by helping companies like Coca Cola and even cities cut pollution. Hara, a 25-employee company that debuted in 2008, provides online software to help companies reduce their carbon footprint -- a $2.5 billion market that will grow 10-fold if the proposed energy bill, which will require companies to get permits for emissions, becomes law, Chief Executive Amit Chatterjee said. At the heart of the legislation is a "cap-and-trade" system that will gradually reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by...

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, in the GOP's weekly radio and Internet address, called the House climate bill "a classic example of unwise government." The address culminated a week of coordinated Republican attacks on the Democratic proposal which would require the first nationwide reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Could reduced sunspots be tied to temperatures on Earth? That's what has astrophysicists and meteorologists wondering as the sun enters a prolonged "quiet period," a deviation from the usual 11-year sunspot cycle in which the dark blobs on our star's surface ebb and flow, reports National Geographic News. And there may be a link to global warming — or, in this case, cooling. Current theories link an earlier solar quiet time to the "Little Ice Age," a cold snap that lasted from about 1300 to 1800 in Europe and North America.

While many companies hire lobbyists to win earmarks, General Electric’s unmatched lobbying force has secured a tax increase — or its equivalent — in President Barack Obama’s budget. Labeled “climate revenues” and totaling $646 billion over eight years, this line item in Obama’s budget has inspired confidence in GE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt. As Immelt put it in a letter this week, he believes that the Obama administration will be a profitable “financier” and “key partner.” On page 115 of Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget is Table S-2, titled “Effect of Budget Proposals on Projected Deficits.” The chart forecasts the...

A day ahead of the opening of the G-8 summit of energy ministers in Rome, the United States and Italy signed a cooperation agreement on clean coal and carbon capture technology. The accord on clean coal and carbon capture technology was the first signed by the United States with a foreign nation. U-S Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the problem of carbon capture has still not been resolved. His Italian counterpart, Italy's Minister for Economic Development Claudio Scajola said the aim of the accord is to exchange know-how, coordinate joint projects, develop new technologies and identify sites to store carbon...

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets. ...When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, an internal memo was sent within Enron that stated, "If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory business."

Libertarians: “Cap and tax” destroys jobs, punishes working familiesHouse Energy and Commerce Committee warned to defeat Waxman-Markey WASHINGTON -- America’s third largest party warned the House Energy and Commerce Committee Tuesday to not approve H.R. 2454, a “cap and tax” bill levying billions of dollars in new job-killing taxes on American businesses. “Cap and tax legislation is the offspring of bad science and bad economics,” said William Redpath, Libertarian National Committee Chairman. “Imposing massive new taxes on carbon production destroys jobs and drastically increases consumer prices with no proven effect on global temperatures.” “Cap and tax compounds the suffering of...

The “greens” must be thrilled with the new Obama/Pelosi/Reid (OPR) troika in charge of the federal government. Three times already, the troika has blocked the development of domestic oil resources. During his first week in office, President Obama rescinded his predecessor’s executive order permitting drilling on the continental shelf and in the Green River Formation. Both areas contain abundant oil—especially Green River (under Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah), which has recoverable shale-oil reserves three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Several weeks later, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar unilaterally canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah, on the...

Global Warming is dead. Global Freezing is in. According Dr. Terri Jackson, a physicist and climatologist, writing in the Belfast (Ireland) Telegraph, on May 13, "There is now irrefutable scientific evidence that far from global warming the earth has now entered a period of global cooling which will last at least for the next two decades. "Evidence for this comes from the NASA Microwave Sounding Unit and the Hadley Climate Research Unit... ." Etcetera ad infinitum. You've heard it before. Just flip the temperature story from high to low. The polar bears are all going to live, but the desert...