Free Republic

In the future, seas will rise far higher than they are today. The question is whether it happens quickly or slowly. There's enough ice stacked on top of Antarctica to raise seas around the globe by almost 200 feet. While it takes time for major changes to occur with that much ice, Antarctica is melting faster than we thought, according to a study recently published in the journal Nature. The melting rate has been speeding up significantly in recent years. Between 1992 and 2017, Antarctica lost more than 3.3 trillion tons of ice, causing sea levels around the globe to...

It seems Pope Francis has learned little since his 2015 encyclical calling on the world to fight climate change by limiting the use of modern technologies and fossil fuels. He called many of the world’s leading oil companies to the carpet last week in a meeting he “requested” (anyone who says no to a meeting with the pope risks alienating many of the world’s estimated 1.3 billion Catholics) with the companies’ top executives. Francis called on the oil companies to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, to save the Earth. In a column written when Francis issued his...

Fossilized hand and footprints have revealed that mankind lived on the Tibetan plateau at the height of the Ice Age -- 16,000 years earlier than anyone previously thought. The 19 fossilized signs of life have also cast doubt on the theory that the plateau was fully covered by a glacier one kilometer thick at that time. The 20,000 year-old prints, 85 kilometers (53 miles) from Lhasa, predates any archaeological evidence on the plateau and suggests that man may have migrated to the "roof of the world" extremely early on. At the arid and frigid site, 4,200 meters above sea level,...

Germany is set to miss its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions target by 8 percent, according to German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The German government set itself the goal of reducing national greenhouse gas emissions until 2020 by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels, but a draft government report estimates that the country will only be able to reduce emissions by 32 percent. Officials had previously estimated a shortfall of 5 percent to 8 percent. The document blames “unexpected economic developments and unexpected population growth” for the failure to meet the target. Increased economic activity and strong population growth generally cause...

The DNC has voted not to accept any donations from fossil fuel companies. From HuffPost: The resolution ― proposed by Christine Pelosi, a party activist and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter ― bars the organization from accepting contributions from corporate political action committees tied to the oil, gas and coal industries. The executive committee voted unanimously to approve the motion. “We talk about how climate change is real and climate change is a planetary emergency, what we need to do is stop taking money from the institutions that have created this crisis,” said RL Miller, president of the super...

Even if global warming is curbed and the increase in global temperature is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, scientists warn rising CO2 concentrations could still trigger a dangerous increase in extreme weather. Broadly speaking, more CO2 translates to higher temperatures, but the relationship between atmosphere and climate is complex, and scientists say there are scenarios in which warming could be limited to 1.5 degrees, despite a sizable increase in atmospheric CO2. New climate models developed by researchers at the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford suggest CO2 levels, not global temperatures, are a better predictor of the most...

A team of scientists at Harvard University and a company called Carbon Engineering announced this week that they’ve figured out a low-cost, industrial-scale method of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Needless to say, it sounds like an exciting technology, which would, as The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer notes, “transform how humanity thinks about the problem of climate change.”To be fair, though, plenty of humans have argued that innovation, rather than widespread state-compelled behavior modification or top-down economic regimes like the ones the Left has proposed over the years, would eventually deal with climate change. This conviction was based...

President Trump didn't play along with the usual narrative at the G-7 summit, and the liberal media predictably characterized him as the villain: Even before then, Mr. Trump had left himself the outlier in the annual session. By departing before the end, he skipped sessions about climate change, oceans and clean energy — ceding not only America’s leadership on those topics, but also its very seat at the table. Lost in this breathless "transcription" of events is the question of whether America should lead on so-called "issues" such as climate change, oceans, and supposedly "clean" energy.

“This is a good example of regulatory capture -- when the people being regulated win over their supervisor to their viewpoint. It happens all the time. He looks a bit of a Shlemiel anyway so was probably not hard to capture Another reason why he was quickly captured probably is that he knows nothing about science. In justifying himself, Bridenstine referred to "The Science" as having convinced him. Whenever anybody talks vaguely about "The Science" as his justification for believing in global warming that is a sure sign that he in fact knows nothing about the issues involved. He is...

President Donald Trump plans to depart from this weekend's Group of 7 summit in Canada several hours early, the White House announced Thursday, punctuating an explosion of acrimony between Trump and his foreign counterparts on the eve of the talks. The White House said Trump would depart mid-morning on Saturday, skipping sessions on climate change and the environment. An aide will take his place, the White House said.

At a Glance: May 2018 was the hottest in 124 years of May records across the Lower 48. Eight states broke warmth records and no state was colder than average. Two states had their wettest Mays. May 2018 was the hottest of any May in 124 years of recording keeping for the continental United States, eclipsing the extreme heat of that month in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl era. The average temperature for the Lower 48 states last month was 65.41 degrees Fahrenheit, 5.21 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1901-2000 average, according to the state of the climate report released...

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says he changed his mind on the existence of man-made climate change because he “read a lot.” “I heard a lot of experts, and I read a lot,” Bridenstine told the Washington Post on Tuesday. “I came to the conclusion myself that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that we've put a lot of it into the atmosphere and therefore we have contributed to the global warming that we've seen. And we've done it in really significant ways.” The former congressman from Oklahoma had long denied the scientific consensus on climate change and said in a...

When tropical cyclones slow, they drop far more rain, sparking even more devastating floods. Future climate change is expected to slow them still more. Tropical cyclones, including hurricanes and typhoons, are now crawling across the planet at a slower pace than they did decades ago, dragging out and amplifying their devastation, new research published Wednesday shows. At the same time, related research published just last month suggests that warming temperatures from climate change will slow storms more in the future. "Nothing good comes out of a slowing storm," says James Kossin, with the NOAA's Center for Weather and Climate, and...

The invasive and aggressive Asian tiger mosquito, capable of infecting people with rare diseases like the Zika virus and dengue fever, is now expected to spread through almost all of Connecticut by 2040, according to a new state report. The Council on Environmental Quality’s annual report also warns that “Infection rates of West Nile Virus and other mosquito-borne diseases are likely to rise as a warming climate creates more favorable habitats for mosquitoes.” “I don’t want to scare anyone,” said Armstrong, who was a co-author of a study published last year on the spread of Asian tiger mosquitoes in this...

"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's." - Matthew 22:21 It’s frosty here this morning, 46 degrees at 5:00 am to be exact. It was just 38 degrees at the same time 60 miles due north of here. I double checked and yes, it is June 6th. No wonder the Pope is meeting with oil company executives from around the world to discuss climate change. After all, who would know more about the science of climatology than the man of God who is likewise an economic expert?I’m just glad I...

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once famously warned Republicans that they were “dying at the box office,” has decided not to support either of the leading GOP candidates for California governor, a spokesman said on Friday. The former governor’s decision to speak out against the candidacies of John Cox, a Rancho Sante Fe businessman, and Travis Allen, an Orange County legislator, stands in sharp contrast to his past refusals to weigh in on those who have followed him into office. “They will not get his vote,” said spokesman Daniel Ketchell. Schwarzenegger’s decision was based on the candidates' past statements about climate change,...

Ask a typical person concerned about global warming if they think Congress will enact a bipartisan solution to climate change, and the response is likely to be a derisive laugh. For millions of Americans who watch cable news shows or read the papers, such cynicism is easy to come by. Democrats and Republicans can barely get together on keeping the government from shutting down. How in the world could they ever come together on an issue as politically divisive as climate change? But in the past decade, the findings and predictions of climate scientists have been validated by real-world evidence:...

Climate change is over. [snip] Judged by deeds rather than words, most national governments are backing away from forced-marched decarbonization. ...President Trump’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Paris Agreement merely ratified a trend long becoming evident. [snip] Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out. This outcome was predictable. Political scientist Anthony Downs described the downward trajectory of many political movements in an article for the Public Interest, “Up and Down With Ecology: The ‘Issue-Attention Cycle,’ ” published in 1972, long before the climate-change campaign began. ...Mr. Downs discerned a five-stage cycle through which political issues...

A claimed nearly unanimous scientific consensus on fear of climate change has caused a push to substantially reduce or even eliminate the use of fossil fuel in favor of solar and wind.  But three crucial questions are: 1) is the scientific community really united?, 2) can solar and wind take over any time soon to provide the required vital energy for the maintenance of modern civilization in today's world of 7 billion people?, and 3) has CO2 caused any harm yet?  The answer to all three questions is no. A major theme of this essay is that many assertions can easily...

Pope Francis will meet with some of the world’s oil executives next week, likely to give them another moral nudge to clean up their act on global warming. Climate change policy and science experts are cautiously hopeful but aren’t expecting any miracles or even noticeable changes. The conference will be a follow-up to the pope’s encyclical three years ago calling on people to save the planet from climate change and other environmental ills, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke confirmed Friday. Cardinal Peter Turkson, who spearheaded the encyclical, set up the June 8-9 conference with the executives. The pope himself will speak...