Free Republic

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is spending $84,000 to study how churches can be used to combat climate change. A taxpayer-funded graduate fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is examining 17 faith-based institutions that have implemented "sustainability initiatives" in the hopes of developing workshops to teach pastors and other religious leaders how to change the behaviors of their congregants. "Climate change-which affects traditional faith-based efforts to improve human health, mitigate poverty and redress social inequity-is inspiring religious organizations to advocate for clean air and water, restore ecosystems, and conserve resources," a grant for the project, which began...

At the print edition of Swiss news weekly “Weltwoche”, science journalist Markus Schär writes that not only has the global temperature trend suspiciously been tampered with, but so have the datasets of the Swiss Meteorological Service:

Its hard to tell if we are witnessing mass climate hysteria, or just loathsome fear mongering to promote a political agenda, but it is oh so predictable, and oh so sickening. Every weather event and every tragedy is now due rising CO2. To paraphrase Dr. Viner, “natural storms and earthquakes are now just a thing of the past”. With the help of a few alarmist scientists, the media bombards us with the meme that “Everything is caused by rising CO2.” Today the Seth Bornstein prize for yellow climate journalism goes to Newsweek. Last August they tried to infect our psyche’s...

Imagine—just imagine, for the sake of the argument—that scientists in a future generation discover that the global-warming trend of recent years was not caused by human activity. If that happens, what will be the consequences for the Catholic Church, in light of the Vatican’s apparent embrace of the climate-change hypothesis? This is not-- repeat, not another column about the scientific evidence for or against the reality human-induced climate change. If you are inclined to respond by denouncing either the proponents or the foes of that theory, please stop. My own personal opinion on that theory is of little or no...

Public employees will only have to work six hours a day until further notice, and police units will be sent to inspect private businesses to ensure they only use their allotted amounts. Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza blamed the measures on climate change. ... The Venezuelan government is responsible for providing electricity in the socialist nation, and concerns that power is running out in the OPEC nation have triggered alarm that power may be next on a list of basic scarcities in Venezuela that include milk, laundry detergent, and vegetable oil. ... Vice President Arreaza also made a bizarre call...

The present four-year California drought is not novel -- even if President Barack Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells -- like those of 1929-34, 1976-77 and 1987-92 -- more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures. What is new is that the state has never had 40 million residents during a drought -- well over 10 million more than during the last dry spell in the early...

Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order to bring down emissions to 40% below 1990 levels, in the next 15 years. The US state was already one of the most ambitious in its previous targets and has forced companies to pay for their carbon pollution. Mr Brown said the new target must be met for the sake of future generations. He called the plan "the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions". There were few details about how he intends to meet this target, but the governor has previously talked about increasing...

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences had its one-day global warming conference yesterday. Not unlike a certain synod, it ended with the issuing of an anticlimactic pre-prepared climatic document “Climate Change and The Common Good: A Statement Of The Problem And The Demand For Transformative Solutions.” Gist: we are soon doomed unless we “do something.” More on that in a moment. First, the Big Question. Why? Why is the Catholic Church entering into the fray of doubtful global warming science? Why now and why with such shrill apocalyptic exaggerated rhetoric? Why strident calls for supranational government control at the same time...

“We are the first generation that can end poverty and the last generation that can avoid the worst impacts of climate change.” UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, told this to a conference of 60 scientists and academicians, political leaders (including the Presidents of Italy and Ecuador), business experts and representatives of the world’s major religions, at a summit meeting in the Vatican on April 28. He addressed the high-powered gathering after “a fruitful and wide-ranging conversation” with Pope Francis, during which the pontiff confirmed that his encyclical on protecting the environment is finished and being translated, and expected to be published...

"Remnant Columnist and International Child Advocate Attorney, Delivers Powerful Message at Vatican Conference" It is perplexing that abortion and reproductive rights zealots like, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network are prominently highlighted at this Catholic Conference in anticipation of Pope Francis’ Environmental Encyclical. Editor’s Note: Child advocate attorney and Remnant columnist, Elizabeth Yore, is taking part in the Heartland Institute’s conference in Rome this week, during the run-up to Pope Francis’s controversial encyclical on climate change. What follows is a transcript of Elizabeth’s talk at the conference in...

No, not Francis, it was another. Yesterday, a conference was held at the Vatican with UN officials including the pro-abortion, population-control advocate Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. The Pope is preparing his "encyclical" on the environment and potentially the junk science of global warming. For real science, take a visit to the McAbee Fossil Beds which clearly show that trees once grew where it is now cold and at elevations unexpected proving that at one time, this area of British Columbia was warmer. We also have a report by Smithsonian scientists on the presence of tropical palm fossils and forests in...

The Vatican has gathered religious leaders, scientists, politicians and businessmen under one roof to agree that acting on climate change is a "moral and religious imperative for humanity". This was the essence of a declaration signed by the attendees of a one-day meeting hosted yesterday by the Holy See. It outlines a vision for the future of the planet, including the adoption of low-carbon energy systems, a shift of investment away from the military and towards sustainable development, and the transfer of money from the rich to the poor. The meeting was organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and...

The untold – and terrifying – story behind the earthquake that devastated Nepal last Saturday morning begins with something that sounds quite benign. It’s the ebb and flow of rainwater in the great river deltas of India and Bangladesh, and the pressure that puts on the grinding plates that make up the surface of the planet. Recently discovered, that causal factor is seen by a growing body of scientists as further proof that climate change can affect the underlying structure of the Earth. Because of this understanding, a series of life-threatening “extreme geological events” – earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis –...

Since his first homily in 2013, Pope Francis has preached about the need to protect the earth and all of creation as part of a broad message on the environment. It has caused little controversy so far. But now, as Francis prepares to deliver what is likely to be a highly influential encyclical this summer on environmental degradation and the effects of human-caused climate change on the poor, he is alarming some conservatives in the United States who are loath to see the Catholic Church reposition itself as a mighty voice in a cause they do not believe in. As...

(Reuters) - The Vatican and the United Nations teamed up to warn the world of the effects of climate change on Tuesday, coming down firmly against skeptics who deny human activities help change global weather patterns. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon discussed climate change with the pope before opening a one-day conference of scientists and religious leaders called "The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development".

Kudos to Pope Francis for calling a conference, scheduled for tomorrow, emphasizing the moral dimensions of climate change. It’s about time we took a clear and sober look at an issue that can cause so much harm to so many, especially the poor and downtrodden. The core problem for the conference is to balance the costs and benefits imposed by climate change against the costs and benefits of a major reduction in the use of fossil fuels, with the understanding that there are only two other sources of dense energy that can effectively replace them, nuclear power and large hydroelectric...

There's been a lot of speculation about what may have caused the global warming "hiatus" seen over the past several years. Now, though, scientists have found that this slowdown will make no difference to how much the planet will warm by 2100. "This much hyped global warming slowdown is just a distraction to the task at hand," said Matthew England, lead author of the new study, in a news release. "This shows that the slowdown in global warming has no bearing on long-term projections-it is simply due to decadal variability. Greenhouse gases will eventually overwhelm this natural fluctuation." In order...

If it snows, it is global warming. If it’s hot, it is global warming. Everything is global warming and must be redressed immediately or the earth will perish It’s late April 2015 and it is still quite cold and the growing season is behind – an unusual late and frigid spring. The trees are just now sprouting green leaves and a few brave ones have even bloomed. If you ask the environmentalists, it is global warming. If it snows, it is global warming. If it’s hot, it is global warming. Everything is global warming and must be redressed immediately or...

WASHINGTON (AP) — If you find yourself sweating out a day that is monstrously hot, chances are you can blame humanity. A new report links three out of four such days to man's effects on climate. And as climate change worsens around mid-century, that percentage of extremely hot days being caused by man-made greenhouse gases will push past 95 percent, according to the new study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

When Dr. Roy Spencer looked up summer temperature data for the U.S. Corn Belt, it showed no warming trend for over a century. But that was before temperatures were “adjusted” by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists — now the same data shows a significant warming trend.Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the National Climatic Data Center made large adjustments to past summer temperatures for the U.S. Corn Belt, lowering past temperatures to make them cooler. Adjusting past temperatures downward creates a significant warming trend in the data that didn’t exist before....