Free Republic

See if you agree that she’s being snotty. Do all those scientists and the Pope have it wrong? asks Couric. “Satellite data show that for the last 17 years there has been no significant recorded warming,” Cruz calmly answers. “None.”It’as a partisan agenda, Cruz insists. The solution is always “more government control of the environment, of the economy, of energy, and our lives.” (Until watching this, I didn’t know that both of his Cruz’s parents were scientists.)Video at link.

The Keystone XL saga has taken a new twist in the New Year. On Jan. 6, TransCanada (the company that would have built and operated the Alberta to Texas pipeline) launched two lawsuits over President Obama's November rejection of the pipeline. One of the lawsuits will challenge the president's constitutional authority to grant permits when Congress has already acted, as it did in early 2015 when a bipartisan bill was passed approving the construction of the pipeline. The second lawsuit seeks damages of more than US$15 billion by issuing a claim under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade...

"My name is Mark Steyn. I am not a scientist. I am an author. My main interest in climate science is that Michael E Mann, the inventor of one of its most notorious artifacts, is suing me for "defamation of a Nobel Prize winner" -- a crime that I was not aware existed, especially in his case, as according to the Nobel Institute he is not a Nobel Prize winner. So I recently edited a book about it called "A Disgrace to the Profession": The World's Scientists -- in Their Own Words-- On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick, and...

Solve real problems instead of chasing problems that do not exist, creating a profitable climate change industry while enabling the U.N. bureaucrats to live a lavish lifestyle, jet-setting around the world to promote their hoax We are so lucky that Al Gore’s “true planetary emergency” did not take place. He predicted it ten years ago at the Sundance Film Festival where his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” premiered. It was the result of an environmental crusade he embarked upon that would make him a billionaire, a Nobel Prize and a Golden Globe winner – “Educating the masses that global warming is...

Former Vice President Al Gore made a prediction for the earth's point of no return 10 years ago and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh held him to it since that day in 2006. The countdown clock on Limbaugh's site has been running for nearly 10 years since Gore's apocalyptic prediction about the earth as a result of greenhouse emissions. Less than a month remains in the countdown. Gore predicted, when his film "An Inconvenient Truth" was first released at the Sundance Film Festival, that the earth would be in "a true planetary emergency" within the next ten years unless drastic...

Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA, has delayed the export of natural gas to Colombia because of climate factors, the Colombian Mines and Energy Ministry said on Friday. In a letter to the Colombian government on Wednesday, PDVSA said the exports would not begin because of "climate variability," the ministry said in a statement. The exports are part of a deal between the two countries, which includes provisions for the neighbors to supply their own markets if necessary before exporting. ... Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol has asked PDVSA to give a new date by which the exports could begin.

The temperature in the Fairbanks, Alaska suburb of North Pole earlier today was apparently in the low-40s Fahrenheit. It was then that Alexandra Sifferlin at Time.com reported the Alaska town's temperature as if it came from the North Pole. The only current evidence of Sifferlin's original grievous error at Time.com is a deliberately vague correction at the bottom of her post telling readers that "This article originally misidentified a temperature reading as belonging to the North Pole." Fortunately, ever-alert blogger Patterico excerpted the post as originally written (the link to North Pole, Alaska's conditions at Weather.com is in the original):

The State Department continues to live in an alternate universe. One day after the agency received criticism for claiming it is successfully "bringing peace" to Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed that of all the achievements of 2015, he is most proud of the historic climate deal reached in Paris.

For all those who still have to deal with that crazy uncle over the Christmas season who insists that human emissions of the gas of life, or carbon dioxide, are causing dangerous global warming, fear not - the solution has arrived. It is called Climate Hustle, and it masterfully debunks the claims of the "climate cult," as many experts now refer to the alarmist movement, like no other resource produced thus far. Well-known analysts are already saying it will turn the tables on the alarmists. But more importantly, it will bring to light the facts and the science surrounding alleged...

Climate: Want to know the latest global warming news? Don't bother looking in U.S. media. They can't be bothered with stories that contradict the man-made climate change narrative. But the truth is out there. Let's start with a new paper from NASA — a distinctly American organization — that was covered by the British Express. The newspaper tells us that our space program has "found the Earth has cooled in areas of heavy industrialization where more trees have been lost and more fossil fuel burning takes place." This is, of course, the opposite of what we've been told for decades.

For nearly a millennium, Egypt's early pharaohs presided over a prosperous and wealthy state that built countless temples and palaces, enormous public works, and the famous Giza pyramids. Much of that prosperity depended on the regular inundations of the Nile River in a country that otherwise would be only desert. Then, around 2200 B.C., ancient texts suggest that Egypt's so-called Old Kingdom gave way to a disastrous era of foreign invasions, pestilence, civil war, and famines severe enough to result in cannibalism. In the past decade, climate data revealed that a severe and long-term drought afflicted the region during this...

Nine hundred kilometers off the east coast of Madagascar lies the tiny island paradise of Mauritius. The waters are pristine, the beaches bright white, and the average temperature hovers between 22°C and 28°C (72°F to 82°F) year-round. But conditions there may not have always been so idyllic. A new study suggests that about 4000 years ago, a prolonged drought on the island left many of the native species, such as dodo birds and giant tortoises, dead in a soup of poisonous algae and their own feces. The die-off happened in an area known as Mare aux Songes, which once held...

A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna, forthcoming in the June issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. The samples were taken from an Egyptian coffin; Manning also examined wood from funeral boats buried near the pyramid of Sesostris III. He used a technique called “dendro radiocarbon wiggle matching,” which calibrates radiocarbon isotopes found in the sample tree rings with patterns known from other places in the world that have already...

Ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt's Nile Delta document the region's ancient droughts and fires, including a huge drought 4,200 years ago associated with the demise of Egypt's Old Kingdom, the era known as the pyramid-building time... said Christopher Bernhardt, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey... "Even the mighty builders of the ancient pyramids more than 4,000 years ago fell victim when they were unable to respond to a changing climate," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "This study illustrates that water availability was the climate-change Achilles Heel then for Egypt, as it may well...

...the fall of the great Egyptian Old Kingdom may have been helped along by a common problem which remains with us now -- drought... a severe period of drought around 4,200 years ago may have contributed to the demise of the civilisation. Using seismic investigations with sound waves, along with carbon dating of a 100-metre section of sediment from the bed of Lake Tana in Ethiopia, the team were able to look back many thousands of years. They were able to see how water levels in the lake had varied over the past 17,000 years, with the sediment signalling lush...

As ancient civilizations across the Middle East collapsed, possibly in response to a global drought about 4,200 years ago, archaeologists have discovered that one settlement in Syria not only survived, but expanded. Their next question is -- why did Tell Qarqur, a site in northwest Syria, grow at a time when cities across the Middle East were being abandoned? "There was widespread abandonment of many of the largest archaeological sites and ancient cities in the region and also large numbers of smaller sites," said Jesse Casana, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas. "At Tell Qarqur and probably...

Comets and disaster in the Bronze AgeCosmic impact is gaining ground as an explanation of the collapse of civilisations, writes Benny Peiser At some time around 2300BC, give or take a century or two, a large number of the major civilisations of the world collapsed. The Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age societies in Israel, Anatolia and Greece, as well as the Indus Valley civilisation in India, the Hilmand civilisation in Afghanistan and the Hongshan Culture in China - the first urban civilisations in the world - all fell into ruin at more...

Drought that destroyed a civilisation MARTIN WILLIAMS November 11 2003 IT is one of history's biggest mysteries and has confounded experts for hundreds of years. But a team of scientists believe they have discovered why the world's first great civilisation, established in Egypt nearly 5000 years ago, crumbled and plunged into a dark age that lasted for more than 1000 years. The researchers, including one academic from St Andrews University, have produced new evidence linking the demise of the Egyptian Old Kingdom with decades of drought after a study of layers of sediment at the source of the Blue Nile...

Comets, Meteors & Myth: New Evidence for Toppled Civilizations and Biblical Tales By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 13 November 2001 "...and the seven judges of hell ... raised their torches, lighting the land with their livid flame. A stupor of despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned daylight into darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup." -- An account of the Deluge from the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2200 B.C. If you are fortunate enough to see the storm of shooting stars predicted for the Nov. 18...

Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary stories, we did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, we did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon. Those who take an interest have known these facts for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and doesn't want to hear about it. This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did...