Free Republic

Self-described "ass-kicking, motorcycle-riding, Texas Democrat" MJ Hegar, a candidate for Texas’ deep-red 31st district, has a novel approach to environmental politics: she doesn’t care if her supporters believe in man-made climate change, but says it's hard to deny the corrupting effects of petroleum dependence on American foreign policy. "Our dependence on foreign oil is just so damaging to our country on so many levels," Hegar told ABC News in a June interview. "I respect other people’s freedom to be discerning and to make their own decisions. But they can’t deny that the U.S. military pays the price for our dependence...

VATICAN CITY—In his first public statement on the horrifying, devastating report on sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, Pope Francis stated he would address the controversy in detail once he’s done talking about climate change for a few more weeks. The head of the Roman Catholic Church claimed he is deeply concerned with the tragic report, but is “just too swamped” with work fighting climate change, criticizing capitalism, and advocating for other issues of social justice to talk about the repulsive report at the moment. “Rest assured, once I have exhausted my talking points on the need for government policies...

Truth Bomb: Interior Secretary and former Montana congressman Ryan Zinke blasted “environmental terrorist groups” over their mindless lockstep opposition to proper forest management including logging as being a major contributing factor to several massive fires burning up the West. In an op-ed for USA Today, Zinke wrote that there are about 100 wildfires currently burning, mostly across the western United States, and that most of them were largely preventable. He also wrote that he had just returned from the massive Ferguson Fire in California while praising POTUS Donald Trump for quickly declaring portions of the state disaster areas so they...

“We think we may have found the answer. Increased circulation in the Southern Ocean allowed carbon dioxide to leak into the atmosphere, working to warm the planet,” said Princeton University’s Professor Daniel Sigman, co-author of the study. For years, researchers have known that growth and sinking of phytoplankton pumps carbon dioxide deep into the ocean, a process often referred to as the ‘biological pump.’ “The biological pump is driven mostly by the low latitude ocean but is undone closer to the poles, where carbon dioxide is vented back to the atmosphere by the rapid exposure of deep waters to the...

Editor's Note: This column was co-written by Paul Driessen and David Wojick. Part 1 of a 3-part series. It’s obscene enough when the Multilateral anti-Development Banks do it. But Trump agencies?!? In a prime example of Deep State revanchism, despite the profound change in administrations, the US Agency for International Development is still funding and advancing anti-energy Obama-era climate change dogmas and policies for developing countries. USAID handles tens of billions of dollars a year, roughly half of all US foreign aid, so this climate alarmism puts literally millions of lives at risk.USAID calls its “flagship” program “low emissions development.” Emissions of course...

The Catastrophic Canard of Climate Change Our forests are now catastrophically overgrown, often carrying four times the number of trees the land can support. In this stressed and weakened condition, our forests are easy prey for drought, disease, pestilence and fire.—Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) The United States Forest Service was originally founded to protect forests from the ravages of fire to preserve it for future generations. That thinking was abandoned in favor of the flawed “no-use movement,” or the “rewilding” theory, which blames humans for the “degradation of our planet.” “Rewilding the land can repair damage we’ve caused and reconnect...

It’s hard for the average citizen to read the news these days and not be worried for the future of the planet. We are told that 13 of the last 16 years have been the warmest on record. We hear that coastal cities such as New York and Atlantic City, as well as nearly all of Florida, are at risk of flooding due to unprecedented sea-level rise. We are told that the wildfires in California and Greece are the worst ever recorded, and that these fires represent a “new normal” because of man-made climate change.But to get a good gauge of...

Sea level rise 'overblown,' solar energy 'dumb,' conference of climate change deniers, Trump officials hear White House officials join event mocking climate change science and renewable power Thomson Reuters · Posted: Aug 09, 2018 4:01 PM ET | Last Updated: 21 minutes ago Pumping carbon dioxide into the air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market; and wind and solar energy are simply "dumb." These are among the messages that flowed from the America First Energy Conference in New Orleans this week, hosted by some of the...

CALIFORNIA, THE nation’s most populous state and the world’s fifth-largest economy, is on fire. In a state already known for monster conflagrations, the past month has been unusually destructive. The Mendocino Complex fire north of San Francisco is now officially the largest in California’s history, having burned an area about the size of Los Angeles, and it is just one of the major blazes the state has had to face since last October. As much as the president might prefer to point fingers elsewhere, it is impossible to talk about California’s blazes without considering the role of climate change. Four...

This summer of fire and swelter looks a lot like the future that scientists have been warning about in the era of climate change, and it’s revealing in real time how unprepared much of the world remains for life on a hotter planet. The disruptions to everyday life have been far-reaching and devastating. In California, firefighters are racing to control what has become the largest fire in state history. Harvests of staple grains like wheat and corn are expected to dip this year, in some cases sharply, in countries as different as Sweden and El Salvador. In Europe, nuclear power...

To curb the effects of climate change, the Paris Agreement calls for limiting the rising temperature only 2 degrees Celsius, but a new study recommends even less. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied how the weather may change if humans are able to limit climate change. The study found that by changing the goal from 2 degrees to 1.5 degrees Celsius could prevent extreme precipitation events, such as abnormally high rain or snow that can lead to severe flooding, landslides and debris flows. "As the climate warms, both the mean state and the variability of extreme precipitation are...

U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) sent a letter to Bank of the West President and Chief Executive Officer Nandita Bakhshi pushing back on the bank’s decision to no longer conduct business with companies engaged in the exploration and production of coal, oil and natural gas. Bank of the West, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, has 23 branches with dedicated employees who work hard to serve communities and families across Wyoming. In his letter, Barrasso condemned the San Francisco headquarter’s attack on Wyoming’s communities and businesses that depend on fossil fuels for energy security, jobs and economic growth. “This misguided and...

Rather than saving people money in gas costs, cleaning up the air, or dealing with the climate crisis, the Trump administration announced its plan to roll back automobile fuel efficiency standards -- proposing to freeze the policy in a few short years. Since cars and trucks are the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States, the existing regulations are crucial in the effort to stop the climate crisis. Limiting pollution for cars is also important for human health, because dirty air from cars is bad for all of us. We know the public will lose from this rollback....

Brown has managed to divert the fawning, slobbering California media away from his actual responsibilities as California Governor, and instead has them focused on hysteria, doom, gloom, and intangibles like "climate change." Last year, as all Hell was breaking loose in California as residents were burned out of their homes, neighborhoods and businesses, Gov. Jerry Brown was jetting around the world spouting climate change propaganda, and calling this California’s ‘new normal.’ “With climate change, some scientists are saying Southern California is literally burning up, and burning up as maybe a metaphor or a description not just to the fires right...

Failed Prognostications of Climate Alarm Anthony Watts / 11 hours ago August 7, 2018 By Rob Bradley writing at IER “If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit [between now and] the year 2025 to 2050…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to … caus[e] sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.”— Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun.” New York Times, June 24, 1988. It has been 30 years since the alarm bell was...

Full Title: Terrifying insights into climate change could build legislative momentum for emissions cuts, researchers argue New research in climate science indicates that extreme events, such as heat waves, the collapse of major ice sheets, and mass extinctions are becoming dramatically more probable. Though cuts in rising emissions appear unlikely with the stalled 2015 Paris agreement, University of California San Diego scientists argue that new developments present an opportunity to shift the politics around climate change. For the first time, scientists can make a strong case that no one is exempt from the extreme and immediate risks posed by a...

Motorists may be taxed on the distance they drive rather than paying excise on fuel at petrol station pumps, under plans proposed by senior officials. The Government is considering numerous schemes to ensure the overall tax take from motoring does not drop significantly as a result of moves to lower emission vehicles. The Department of Finance has outlined a series of options on how to ensure the exchequer does not lose out, such as a fixed charge on the purchase of every car, no matter how low its emissions levels are. Recent policy has been designed to encourage motorists to...

A new study out Monday warns of the possibility of out-of-control global warming if humans fail to band together to fight the worst effects of climate change. The analysis, conducted by researchers at the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center, among other institutions, outlines the potential for a "threshold" that, if crossed, would lead to runaway warming patterns and the advent of a "Hothouse Earth." If such a threshold is crossed, the study warns, global average temperatures could climb as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit above current temperatures and sea levels could rise 30 to 200 feet. "Crossing...

We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting...

At the center of the table in a modest, high-rise apartment in the teeming city of Shenzhen, China, a simmering pot of soup stock was surrounded by large platters featuring mushrooms, different kinds of thinly shaved meat, lettuce, potato, cauliflower, eggs, and shrimp. Folding his hands together, Jian Zhang, a onetime rural farmer who now works as an employee for a small consulting firm in the city, asked his fellow diners to give thanks for the meal — the likes of which he could have only dreamed of when growing up in a remote village in the Jiangxi province. The...