Free Republic

The Biden administration on Thursday placed the final cornerstone of its plan to tackle climate change: a regulation that would force the nation’s coal-fired power plants to virtually eliminate the planet-warming pollution they release into the air or shut down. The regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency requires coal plants in the United States to reduce 90% of their greenhouse pollution by 2039, one year earlier than the agency had initially proposed. The compressed timeline was welcomed by climate activists but condemned by coal executives who said the new standards would be impossible to meet... Taken together, the regulations could...

The record-breaking rain that fell over the United Arab Emirates and Oman this month, triggering deadly floods and chaos, was driven partly by the climate crisis, according to a scientific analysis published Thursday, which pointed directly at humans burning fossil fuels.A team of 21 scientists and researchers, under the World Weather Attribution initiative, found that climate change was making extreme rainfall events in the two countries — which typically fall during El Niño years — between 10 and 40% more intense than they would have been without global warming.Over a period of less than 24 hours between April 14 and...

No need to make a stink: Controlling bovine flatulence could be key to helping curb global warming. New research suggests that breeding dairy cows to fart less — and, therefore, release less methane — could cut down on greenhouse gases. The team from Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute in Australia combed through 27 reports, drawing conclusions about various ways to curb methane emissions in the dairy and beef sectors in the country. Food production is one of the leading causes of climate change — livestock farming accounts for about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions — with one 2020 study finding...

Facing dire polling numbers and a lack of left-wing enthusiasm for his “re-election” campaign, Joe Biden is considering taking an extreme measure that should send chills down the spines of any American who values liberty. During an April 19 broadcast of the Fox Business Show The Bottom Line with Dagen and Duffy, co-host Sean Duffy revealed that the Biden White House told Fox Business that it is considering defying the Constitution and declaring a climate emergency. He then turned to his guest Marc Morano, a former Republican political aide who runs a climate change skeptic website called ClimateDepot.com, and asked...

When Mount Ruang in Indonesia underwent multiple explosive eruptions last week, volcanic gases were flung so high they reached the atmosphere’s second layer, tens of thousands of feet above ground. The force of Mount Ruang’s eruptions this week ejected an ash plume tens of thousands of feet in the air and sent some volcanic gases more than 65,000 feet into the air, according to satellite estimates – about 25,000 feet higher than a commercial airplane will typically fly. The eruption’s potential impacts to weather and climate are starting to come into focus, even as the danger posed by the volcano...

The once prestigious Lancet medical journal is galloping onward in its woke agenda, insisting on an “inextricable” link between climate change and immigration. In its most recent issue, the Lancet laments a lack of widespread appreciation for the “climate–migration–health nexus,” while urging greater efforts to awaken the public to the problem. “Climate change is increasingly driving population movement, acting as a driver of and a barrier to migration and as a hazard experienced during journeys or on arrival at new destinations,” the journal contends.

We’re coming up on three and a half years into the Biden presidency — a presidency which from the outset promised an “all of government” regulatory onslaught to force a transition away from fossil fuels and to “green” energy. And the regulatory onslaught has indeed come forth. But how about the actual transition in energy use? Not so much. Let’s have a round-up of some recent data points. On the regulatory onslaught front, on March 7, 2024 Thomas Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research put out a list of “200 Ways the Biden Administration and Democrats Have Made it...

How liberals killed Earth DayOPINION:Earth Day used to be a celebration of our individual and collective responsibility to protect the planet and improve human health. It was about science and data. Unfortunately, today, Earth Day has little to do with the planet and more to do with far-left agendas meant to increase control over the population.The paint-throwing, street-blocking activists will be out in force pushing their narrative of climate doom, more than happy to ignore science in the process. The media will reflexively add credibility to the nonsense.President Biden will tout the importance of some patently unachievable electric vehicle or...

Nike will lay off about 740 employees at its world headquarters in Oregon, a letter showed on Friday, as the top sportswear maker looks to rein in costs after warning of a revenue dip in the first half of fiscal 2025. The "second phase of impacts" would begin by June 28 at its headquarters, Michele Adams, Nike's vice president for people solutions, said in a legally mandated notice to state authorities. The company's shares were up marginally in after-hours trading. They have declined nearly 13% this year. Nike had in December announced a cost savings plan for $2 billion over...

BISBEE, Ariz. — Boots dusty, lungs heaving, Dr. John Wiens searched the boulders of a desolate Arizona mountaintop for the last survivors of a 3-million-year-old lizard population — then said the words that both confirmed his life's work and broke his heart. "They're not there," he said. "It seems like the species is now extinct." The loss of plant and animal species on Earth is happening at a speed never seen in human history, according to the United Nations. That includes the likely extinction of the lizards Wiens has studied for 10 years — the population of Yarrow's spiny lizards...

Global warming has slightly slowed the Earth’s rotation — and it could affect how we measure time. A study published Wednesday found that the melting of polar ice — an accelerating trend driven primarily by human-caused climate change — has caused the Earth to spin less quickly than it would otherwise.

Nut Zero strikes again. The German Transport Minister is bowing to the inevitable: Net Zero laws in Germany must be changed. Unless they are, driving on weekends will have to be banned. Germans were warned weekend driving may be banned to meet 'net zero ' targets.A corresponding reduction in traffic performance would only be possible through restrictive measures that are difficult to communicate to the population, such as nationwide and indefinite driving bans on… pic.twitter.com/U6i3rdZ9Na— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) April 15, 2024Volker Wissing, a member of the minority Free Democratic Party--a center/center-right party in Germany that often holds the balance of...

TECOPA, Calif. — Sometimes the desert holds its secrets close, whispering them only to those who carefully listen. But this year, the hottest and driest place in America might as well be shouting. In California’s Death Valley region, the last few months have been remarkably loud. And the latest bellow is still ringing out, with the area’s native wildflowers bursting into bloom. The flowers have filled a place best known for its shades of browns and grays with brilliant blasts...

Scientists have created an interactive map that shows how parts of Illinois may be swallowed up by Lake Michigan as climate change bites. The Great Lakes in the Midwest comprise the largest unfrozen freshwater stores on Earth, but experts have forecast that rising water levels could have serious consequences. More than 30 million people live along the lakes' roughly 4,500 miles of coastline, which stretches across the U.S. and Canada, and touches upon the cities of Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, New York. That means millions of families could be hit hard by new, higher water levels, which could potentially wash...

OXFORD, England (AP) — Humanity has only two years left “to save the world” by making dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift, the head of the United Nations climate agency said. With governments of the world facing a 2025 deadline for new and stronger plans to curb carbon pollution, nearly half of the world's populations voting in elections this year, and crucial global finance meetings later this month in Washington, United Nations executive climate secretary Simon Stiell said Wednesday he...

In recent months Tesla has had a bumpy ride. In January the electric-vehicle (ev) pioneer warned that growth would be “notably lower” this year, as motorists’ enthusiasm for battery power loses charge. The same month it had to suspend most production at its giant factory near Berlin because of supply disruptions caused by turmoil in the Red Sea. Its market share in China, the world’s biggest ev market, is falling as it fends off cheaper local competition, especially from byd, which late last year briefly eclipsed Tesla as the world’s biggest ev-maker. Tesla hit another big pothole on April 2nd,...

In a far-reaching new essay in The New Atlantis, the environmental researcher Ted Nordhaus makes a damning and authoritative case that while the basic science of CO2 and climate is solid, it has been abused by the activist class in service of a wildly irresponsible and unscientific climate catastrophism. This reckless alarmism, saturated across the mainstream media and endlessly amplified by it, has had profound societal consequences. It has both distorted public understanding of the massive benefits the carbon economy makes possible and grossly exaggerated the risks of extreme events it allegedly makes more likely. As a result it has...

A team of European researchers says that hundreds of thousands of meteorites, which may provide valuable information about the dawn of life on Earth, are disappearing from Antarctica at an alarming rate. Based on their research, the scientists behind the alarming findings say that as many as three-quarters of the approximately 300,000-800,000 meteorites resting on the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet could be lost by 2050. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research says the culprit behind the wholesale disappearance is the steady rise in global temperature. “For every tenth of a degree of increase in global...

The Senate on Wednesday afternoon voted in favor of passing a bill reversing the Biden administration's actions mandating states to track and set reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on highways. The chamber approved the resolution in a 53-47 vote in which Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joined every Republican voting in the affirmative. The bill was introduced in February by Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; and Manchin. "Few things are more frustrating in government than un-elected bureaucrats asserting authority they don’t have and foisting federal...

President Joe Biden is spending more than $1 trillion on his climate agenda, but it does not seem to be resonating at all with voters in battleground states, according to new polling from The Wall Street Journal.Only 2% of registered voters surveyed named climate change as the most important issue in the 2024 election, compared to 25% who identified immigration as the top issue and 22% who indicated that the economy was their top concern, according to the WSJ’s poll. The White House has touted Biden’s massive green agenda as “the most ambitious climate, conservation, and environmental justice agenda” in...