Free Republic

Democrats for over a century were associated with the American middle class. Working-class voters once believed that Democratic-inspired intervention into the economy – minimum-wage laws, overtime pay, Social Security, Medicare, workers’ compensation – protected their interests better than unfettered free-market capitalism. Republicans often had trouble selling the argument that an unleashed economy and new technology would relegate poverty to a relative, not absolute, condition – something like suffering with a cheap outdated iPhone 4 while the better-off afforded an iPhone 6. Why, then, have Democrats lost the working class – especially white, lower-middle-class voters? There are several obvious reasons. For...

Bespectacled, balding, and thin, the Australian scholar Peter Singer has the looks of a stereotypical college professor. You would never be able to tell simply by his unassuming persona that his mind holds some of the most controversial ideas in American academia.  Singer has spent a lifetime justifying the unjustifiable. He is the founding father of the animal liberation movement and advocates ending “the present speciesist bias against taking seriously the interests of nonhuman animals.” He is also a defender of killing the aged (if they have dementia), newborns (for almost any reason until they are two years old),...

While much of the debate over climate change surrounds whether or not it is occurring, one glaciologist and retired professor says the real issue is that the topic is being used as a political pawn to siphon money and votes. Dr. Terry Hughes, in an interview with The College Fix, said researchers want to keep federal funding for climate change alive, and politicians want to earn environmentalist votes, and both predict global pandemonium to that end. Hughes, a professor emeritus of earth sciences and climate change at the University of Maine, said for years his colleagues urged him to be...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent and self-described socialist from Vermont, inadvertently reminded America “progressive” is just another word for “socialist” ... In his column, titled “Fight for Our Progressive Vision,” Sanders called for universal health care, increased government redistribution of wealth, limits on political speech, additional government action against “climate change,” $1 trillion in new infrastructure spending and .... Meanwhile, in Sanders’s home state of Vermont, Democrat Gov. Peter Shumlin announced last month he was abandoning single-payer socialized medicine program Green Mountain Care because it was too expensive. While Sanders is widely seen as a standard-bearer for progressive thought, it’s...

Move over, radical Islam. Step aside, poverty and political oppression. Pope Francis is expected to soon issue a rare papal encyclical, an official statement about what the pontiff believes is the world's most pressing issue -- "climate change." A month ago, during the U.N. climate change conference in Lima, Peru, the Pope warned of the dire consequences of climate change and declared that the "time to find global solutions is running out." Last October, the Pope said: "An economic system centered on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent...

Sen. Jim Inhofe said he plans to use a legislative maneuver that would allow rejection of environmental regulations by majority vote to take whacks at President Obama's agenda, signaling a contentious two years between the White House and Congress with the Oklahoma Republican helming the Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe said he intends to use the Congressional Review Act to strike down a proposed rule limiting carbon emissions from power plants along with other regulations once they are finalized. Any attempt to do so, however, almost certainly would be vetoed by Obama, who has said he plans to protect...

In our information age, we’re bombarded with statistics on every danger the number crunchers can conjure — people struck by lightning, airplane vs. automotive deaths, and even drownings in bathtubs. But one statistic is curiously missing from the list. Even though President Obama and other global-warming alarmists warn of a looming climate apocalypse, they avoid giving a metric to prove their claims. They blame man-made climate change for a vast array of ills, including floods, droughts, wildfires, and tornados. But they never quantify what they say is the driving force behind it all: temperature.They have a very good reason. Actual...

Despite dire predictions that the North Pole would be ice-free in the near future, Arctic Sea ice levels have been more stable than scientists predicted.  So far this winter, Arctic Sea ice levels are above where they were at the same time last winter and are well within the the standard deviation of the 1981 to 2010 variation, according to daily sea ice data.Europe’s CryoSat-2 satellite found that sea-ice volumes for the fall of 2014 were above the average extent for the last five years. Sea-ice levels were up sharply from 2011 and 2012, according to the satellite– only slightly...

Environmentalism: Re-upping on delusional climate-change fantasies, "Governor Moonbeam" asked in his inauguration speech Monday for the Golden State to meet half its energy needs with renewable energy by 2030. Gov. Jerry Brown, who leads the state that hosted Solyndra, embraces bird-chopping wind turbines and builds crispy critter-producing solar panel farms, is a leading advocate of renewable energy and environmental protection. As pollution from coal-fired plants and industries in China wafted across the Pacific, he took a deep breath at his fourth inauguration as the state's chief executive and doubled down on green energy's failed promise by tasking California to fight...

The use of carbon fuels in the production, fertilizing, transport, and storage of food has been a major factor in allowing the world population to grow by several billions since the industrial revolution. If climate alarmists succeed in turning back the clock, food and energy will again become reserved for the rich and powerful, and billions of poor people will die of starvation or exposure.

One of the rarest and most important things a pope does is issue encyclicals. In the eight years of Pope Benedict’s papacy, he issued three encyclicals. In the 27 years of Pope John Paul II’s papacy, he issued 14 encyclicals. Since his ascendancy to the papacy in March 2013, Pope Francis has issued one. But Pope Francis is about to issue an encyclical to the world’s 5,000 bishops and 400,000 priests that tells us a great deal about him, about Latin America, and, most of all, about the influence of what has been the most dynamic religion in the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's determined efforts to combat global warming face their biggest trial yet as Republicans take full control of Congress this week. The GOP vows to move fast and forcefully to roll back his environmental rules and force his hand on energy development. Related Stories New Congress Grapples With Energy The Wall Street Journal For President Obama, Going It Alone Has Its Risks The Wall Street JournalObama, GOP-led Congress prepare for veto showdowns Associated PressWhere Is U.S. Energy Policy Heading Over the Next Two Years? The Wall Street JournalObama, Congress Brace For Veto Showdowns Huffington Post...

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday named Shailen Bhatt the next executive director for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). He will assume the role in mid-February. Bhatt will replace Don Hunt, who will remain at CDOT through the end of February to transition with Bhatt ... Prior to serving at DelDOT, Bhatt was an associate administrator at the Federal Highway Administration ... "Don Hunt has been a remarkable executive director for the Colorado Department of Transportation. His ability to galvanize the Herculean efforts that so swiftly reopened the state's bridges and the hundreds of miles of roads damaged by the...

Top 10 lists are popular this time of year, so I gave in to the peer pressure. Here’s my Top 10 list of totally true climate stories of 2014. Kind of like that movie “Fargo”, which was not “based on a true story”, but was a totally “true story”. 10. Weather did not even occur before Henry Ford automated the production of the automobile. No, really, look it up. 9. Climate modelers discovered that the Earth is not warming nearly as fast as their models predicted. A multi-billion dollar effort is now underway to make the climate system warm even...

Investigation after 328-foot turbine buckles at wind farm in County Tyrone despite only light winds A 328-foot tall wind turbine worth more than £2 million pounds has buckled and collapsed on a mountainside in Northern Ireland. Unconfirmed reports suggested the blades of the turbine had spun out of control - despite only light wind speeds - before the structure came crashing to the ground on Friday. Locals claimed the sound of the turbine hitting the mountain could be heard up to seven miles away from the Screggagh wind farm, near Fintona in County Tyrone.

How the Earth is getting both colder and warmer at the same time defies reality, but that is of little concern to Dr. Holdren As January 2014 arrived with a blast of cold air ominously dubbed the “polar vortex”, the White House released a video in which the Chief Science Advisor to President Obama, Dr. John Holdren, managed to get on both sides of it, declaring the “extreme cold” to be “a pattern that we expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues.” How the Earth is getting both colder and warmer at the same time defies reality,...

High-profile Republicans converged this year around a new favorite refrain when it comes to climate change: “I’m not a scientist.” Party leaders and candidates for office repeated variations of the theme throughout the year when asked whether manmade climate change is happening and what should be done about it. “What I have said repeatedly is I’m not a scientist,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) told a Kentucky sports radio show. “I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change,” Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) said of the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants. “I’d leave it to the...

If global temperatures continue to rise, the taste of your favourite wine could either drastically change, or the drink could be off the menu completely. A wine expert has warned that fine wines in particular, such as Pinot Noir, are having their flavour significantly altered due to climate change. And, as a result, vineyard owners are ditching these grape varieties in favour of those that are better equipped to handle the increases in global temperature.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, the government has been issuing guidelines about healthy eating choices. Now, a panel that advises the Agriculture Department is ready to recommend that you be told not only what foods are better for your own health, but for the environment as well. That means that when the latest version of the government's dietary guidelines comes out, it may push even harder than it has in recent years for people to choose more fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and other plant-based foods — at the expense of meat.

As Britain shivers under a blanket of snow and ice, it has emerged that offshore windfarms have been idling to prevent icing up – and drawing electricity off the national grid to do so. Critics have pointed out the “folly” of having windfarms idle in a cold snap, but industry experts insist that all forms of power generation involve some electrical input. The issue has been raised by Brian Christley, a resident of Abergele, Wales, who wrote to the Daily Telegraph to say: “Over the weekend just gone, the coldest of the year so far, all 100-plus off-shore wind turbines...