Free Republic

Bay Area billionaire Tom Steyer's blitz against candidates who are soft on climate change is underway in seven states, but some prominent fact-checking groups say he's emitting enough hot air to melt a few glaciers. Negative reviews from watchdogs like PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and the Washington Post are dogging one of the nation's biggest political donors, a former hedge fund manager who ditched his ties to fossil fuels and presented himself as a transparent antidote to the conservative Koch brothers' semi-clandestine funding network.

Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth’s surface. At first this was a blip, then a trend, then a puzzle for the climate science community. More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. New research from the University of Washington shows that the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle. The study...

The Old Farmer's Almanac, the familiar, 223-year-old chronicler of climate, folksy advice and fun facts, is predicting a colder winter and warmer summer for much of the nation. Published Wednesday, the New Hampshire-based almanac predicts a "super-cold" winter in the eastern two-thirds of the country. The west will remain a little bit warmer than normal. "Colder is just almost too familiar a term," Editor Janice Stillman said. "Think of it as a refriger-nation." More bad news for those who can't stand snow: Most of the Northeast is expected to get more snowfall than normal, though it will be below normal...

Congress should use the appropriations process to reassert its authority over the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a Heritage Foundation issue brief released Tuesday.The report, written by scholar Daren Bakst, identifies three issues on which the EPA has proposed rules and regulations that exceed its authority. In all three cases, Bakst recommends that Congress prohibit the agency from using its funding to implement the proposals. (RELATED: EPA Overrides Congress, Hands Over Town to Indian Tribes)According to the report, “the EPA is using the regulatory process to require greenhouse gas emission reductions even as Congress has been unwilling to take such...

Extraterrestrials are conveniently global warming believers Only Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson who rose to Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Elliott Trudeau, would tell you that not only do extraterrestrials exist, but they are getting ticked off with those earthlings who don’t buy into Al Gore,/Maurice Strong man-mad global warming. And only Russian Television would be the first to break the ‘scoop’. It’s not enough that earthbound worries like the far left jumping into bed with the expanding Islamic State-Caliphate; that Marxism is on the march in the U.S.A.; or that the...

Thousands of birds are flying into a new solar "mega-trap" in the middle of California's Mojave Desert, killing the avian lot at a rate of up to one bird every two minutes, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The state-of-the-art Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), which opened in February, is the world's largest solar plant to utilize "power towers," skyscraping structures that receive beams of focused solar rays to generate electricity. At Ivanpah, the sun's ray's are redirected from a sea of more than 300,000 mirrors on the desert surface below to hit water filled boilers...

Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays — "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, --SNIP-- The bird kills mark the latest instance in which the quest for clean energy sometimes has inadvertent environmental harm. Solar farms have been criticized for their impacts on desert tortoises, and wind farms have killed...

If you thought last winter was bad, get ready for a potentially worse winter in parts of the country this year. But another record-setting winter could mean more than higher heating bills and snow fights. Harsh winter weather combined with coal-fired power plant closings could spell trouble for many households across the country who will desperately need to keep the lights and heat on this winter. Joe Bastardi, chief meteorologist at WeatherBELL Analytics, told the Wall Street Journal Live that current weather patterns are “flowing along right now into the type of El Niño situation that is notorious for giving...

... In a study published in 2012, researchers asked national infectious disease experts in 30 different countries whether or not they thought climate change would affect infectious disease patterns in their countries. The majority agreed. Nevertheless, it’s unclear whether these beliefs are driven by good science, or, as Malcolm Gladwank argued way back in 1995, a guilt-driven “idea of disease as a punishment for wickedness.” It’s true that West Africa, where the latest and most catastrophic Ebola outbreak is currently raging, has faced unequivocal environmental changes in recent years. The International Food Policy Research Institute published a report in 2013,...

US Secretary of State John Kerry continues to baffle observers by insisting that "global warming is, by far, the greatest threat mankind faces in the 21st century." "The reason should be obvious from the term 'global' warming," Kerry said. "This means that it affects everyone. This has to put it ahead of dangers that afflict necessarily narrower categories of victims. The beheading of innocent children by ISIS in Iraq, for example, only affects thousands of people." "The threat to wipe Israel off the map and exterminate the Jews, at worst, would entail the deaths of only a few million," Kerry...

Public relations (PR) is a powerful but unseen force in our society. Companies hire PR firms to make them look as good as possible. When the companies do something they are proud of, they do everything they can to make sure everyone hears about it (including, sometimes contacting reporters like us). When the companies do things that are not so great, they “spin” the news to make it sound harmless. PR firms make their money from fees paid by their clients and have typically been value-neutral, meaning that they promote whatever their clients want them to promote. So it’s a...

Many scientists and non-scientists are discussing "Global Warming" (or as it is increasingly being called "Anthropogenic Climate Change" or ACC). ACC would simply be an interesting topic for discussion if it were not for the politicization, polarization, and sensationalism that have accompanied the science.

Diplomacy: Great leadership isn't necessarily about intelligence, expertise or background. It's more about wisdom and judgment. Based on this, Americans should be very concerned about Secretary of State John Kerry. As the world melts into chaos and threats to the U.S. homeland multiply, America's top foreign policy official seems bizarrely, even dangerously, fixated on ... global warming. In remarks at the East-West Center in Honolulu on Wednesday, Kerry repeated his claim that climate change is "the biggest challenge ... we face right now." To which we respond: Can he be serious? In recent days, we've seen the establishment of a...

Rupert Darwall is the author of Age of Global Warming (and earning excellent reviews). Darwall has a gift for converting tricky scientific concepts into a story. This month in the City Journal, he beautifully summarizes and updates the story of Murry Salby. He’s interviewed Richard Lindzen and others, and discusses Salby’s work in the context of the way heretics are marginalized. I helped Rupert with some of the background. It’s controversial science, a complex situation, with irrelevant baggage to boot. But that’s exactly the place where science communicators — or in the case of Rupert, excellent historians — are most...

WASHINGTON – News outlets, advocacy groups and fellow think tanks are jumping to the defense of a conservative-leaning D.C. policy center and publication being sued for libel by a scientist who didn't like what they had to say about his work on global warming. Michael Mann, a prominent professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, has long been a target of climate change skeptics for his work claiming temperatures have risen dramatically in recent decades, and has sued before when groups tried to debunk his data. But this time, Mann is being accused of going too far with his case...

Kellogg said Wednesday it will step up efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions in its supply chain as part of a broader initiative designed to be more environmentally friendly. Under the plan, the Battle Creek-based food products manufacturer will require key suppliers such as farms and mills to measure and publicly disclose their greenhouse gas outputs and targets for reducing them...

Former President Carter says climate skeptics are the "biggest handicap" for the U.S. when it comes to acting on global warming. “I would say the biggest handicap we have right now is some nutcases in our country that don’t believe in global warming,” Carter said Tuesday during the American Renewable Energy Day summit in Aspen, Colo. “I think they are going to change their position because of pressure from individuals, because the evidence of the ravages of global warming is already there," he added. The 39th president expressed frustration with the administration and Congress on their lack of efforts to...

"I found, as somebody from Hawaii, the water is still a little cold."

British scientists are stranded after their Antarctic base lost power in the depths of winter as temperatures plummeted to a record low of minus 55C. There is no way of rescuing the 13 researchers from the Halley VI Research Station - which has been hit by a 19-hour blackout - for months until the hostile winter subsides. The British Antarctic Survey admitted it was a 'serious incident' and has suspended all experiments as the workers heat up emergency accommodation which has not been used for months. Some of the fallout from the power cut, which happened a week ago but...

The 2014 US-Africa Leaders Summit hosted by President Obama this past week brought together the largest-ever gathering of African government officials in Washington, DC. They discussed ways to bolster trade and investment by American companies on a continent where a billion people – including 200 million aged 15 to 24 – are becoming wealthier and better educated. They have steadily rising expectations and recognize the pressing need to create jobs, improve security, reduce corruption, and control diseases like Ebola, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. They also understand that better roads and air transportation, improved agriculture and nutrition, and far more energy...