Free Republic

OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming is likely to disrupt a natural cycle of ice ages and contribute to delaying the onset of the next big freeze until about 100,000 years from now, scientists said on Wednesday. In the past million years, the world has had about 10 ice ages before swinging back to warmer conditions like the present. In the last ice age that ended 12,000 years ago, ice sheets blanketed what is now Canada, northern Europe and Siberia. In a new explanation for the long-lasting plunges in global temperatures that cause ice ages, scientists pointed to a combination of...

Humans may evolve bizarre features such as webbed feet and eyes like cats in response to changing environments, a scientist claims today. Experts calculated how our physical appearance could change under a number of scenarios, including a 'water world' if melting ice caps cause rising sea levels. They also considered what would happen in a second ice age which could be triggered by an asteroid strike, and if humans colonised other planets. Dr Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent, examined the three scenarios and worked with artist Quentin Devine to help visualise how humans could look in...

Harvard professor and legal eagle Alan Dershowitz talks about political correctness and 'safe spaces' on college campuses. Dershowitz tells college students to "stay home" if they want a safe space. ... they don't want to hear opposing points of view. They know everything they need to know about race, about gender, about rape, about you name it, climate control. They don't want to hear opposing points of view... ... We have to distinguish between safe spaces for ideas, where there should be none, and physically safe places where you're not intimidated or you're not threatened. And christian speakers, pro-Israel speakers,...

Though climate alarmists never tire of demonizing greenhouse gases and "fossil" fuels, hell has no fury equal to the venom they reserve for those maligned as "climate deniers." "This is treason, and we need to start treating them as traitors," spat environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at the 2007 Live Earth Concert at New Jersey's Giants Stadium. NASA's James Hansen testified before a congressional committee in 2008 that "CEO's of fossil energy companies ... should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature." A 2009 Talking Points Memo article reached bloodthirsty pitch by asking, "At what point do we...

The Keystone XL saga has taken a new twist in the New Year. On Jan. 6, TransCanada (the company that would have built and operated the Alberta to Texas pipeline) launched two lawsuits over President Obama's November rejection of the pipeline. One of the lawsuits will challenge the president's constitutional authority to grant permits when Congress has already acted, as it did in early 2015 when a bipartisan bill was passed approving the construction of the pipeline. The second lawsuit seeks damages of more than US$15 billion by issuing a claim under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade...

The developing world deserves reparations from wealthier nations as compensation for the harmful climate change effects that are mostly our fault. It's us who have tainted our global commons by emitting vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and us whose actions have led to extreme weather and other disasters in the world's most vulnerable regions. But a strictly financial mea culpa from rich nations won't be enough. Rich countries should also invest in geoengineering projects to provide solutions for those on the front lines of climate change: those who cannot afford to pay for more adaptive and resilient...

Over the last few days California has been hit by a series of winter storms that have been driven by an El Nino aimed Jetstream pattern that has pushed further to the south and with more zonal flow than usual.It has been comical to watch some of the television news coverage of these events related to weather especially in Los Angeles. Incidence of minor street flooding and stalled cars from people that were unobservant enough to drive thru knee deep water at road speed turned into almost comical rescue events.On Fox News 11 in Los Angeles there were scenes of...

When my wife was a student at Hillsdale College __ years ago (Nope! Not telling!), some student friends worked in a sausage factory nearby. They literally waded in hip boots in vast vats of various parts of cattle and pig carcasses headed for massive grinders. "I'll never eat sausage again!" was their common reaction. That's not to say (properly cooked) sausage isn't really safe, but it gives some idea how the saying arose that you never want to watch legislation being crafted because it's a lot like watching sausage being made. Well, it's increasingly clear that you don't want to...

Scientists say cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean have thrown Earth’s surface into what may be an unprecedented warming spurt, following a global warming slowdown that lasted about 15 years. While El Niño is being blamed for an outbreak of floods, storms and unseasonable temperatures across the planet, a much slower-moving cycle of the Pacific Ocean has also been playing a role in record-breaking warmth. The recent effects of both ocean cycles are being amplified by climate change. A 2014 flip was detected in the sluggish and elusive ocean cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, which also...

If you must drive, get on with it. Don't just sit there and let your car warm up — it is a machine that is designed to move after all — and all you're doing is adding to the state's notorious wintertime pollution problems. Results from a 14-month collaborative study show that 75 percent of a vehicle's combined emissions occur within the first three minutes after it has sat for 12 hours for more. It's called a "cold start," and if drivers want to help clean up Utah's dirty air, they should avoid it if possible. "Cold starts are a...

Today, Pres. Obama announced new executive orders on gun control designed to keep "mentally ill" people from buying guns - but, will they be used to prevent climate skeptics from buying firearms? Under Obama's new rules, doctors can now report people deemed "mentally ill" to the FBI so they can be denied gun licenses. As the official White House fact sheet on the new gun control regulations states (emphasis added): "Current law prohibits individuals from buying a gun if, because of a mental health issue, they are either a danger to themselves or others or are unable to manage their...

Solve real problems instead of chasing problems that do not exist, creating a profitable climate change industry while enabling the U.N. bureaucrats to live a lavish lifestyle, jet-setting around the world to promote their hoax We are so lucky that Al Gore’s “true planetary emergency” did not take place. He predicted it ten years ago at the Sundance Film Festival where his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” premiered. It was the result of an environmental crusade he embarked upon that would make him a billionaire, a Nobel Prize and a Golden Globe winner – “Educating the masses that global warming is...

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kelly Rohrbach have reportedly split. The 41-year-old actor and 25-year-old Sports Illustrated model -- who has recently been signed up to star in a big-screen Baywatch remake with The Rock -- were first linked in June of last year and apparently broke up a month ago. "They've been broken up for over a month. It was mutual. They both have intense work schedules and a lot going on in their lives right now. They both needed to take a break because of that. They are still friends and talking but it's over," a source told Us Weekly....

Raqqa, Syria Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS, announced today that he would be disbanding all forces and returning all land to Syria and Iraq. The move was prompted by the ongoing Climate Conference in Paris. "This is one thing we could not have anticipated," Mr. al-Baghdadi said in prepared remarks. "When we see the world coming together like this on such a dangerous subject as Global Climate Change, we realize that our Caliphate will never survive. It's only a matter of time before Climate Change is no...

Here is some good news for drought-stricken California; the latest forecast model output from WeatherBell suggests that the Sierra Nevada snow-pack will get a fresh dump of up to 10 feet of snow. The Sierra snow-pack has already been reported as above normal (at 136 percent of normal) in the most recent snow survey conducted by the California Department of Water Resources. DWR Director Mark Cowin said the heavy snowfall so far during Water Year 2016 “has been a reasonable start, but another three or four months of surveys will indicate whether the snowpack’s runoff will be sufficient to replenish California’s reservoirs by...

Climate change could put Bermuda at risk of greater economic damage and dent its sovereign credit rating more than many countries and islands. That is the finding of a speculative report by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services. Using direct damage data from Swiss Re, the agency estimated the possible adverse effect of climate change on 38 countries. It based its measurements on the expectation of a once-in-250-year natural catastrophe event striking, and the impact being exacerbated a further 20 per cent to represent the magnified additional damage expected to be inflicted due to climate change. Projected out 35 years to...

New York Attorney General (AG) Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into Exxon Mobil, the world's largest energy company, and subpoenaed all company documents related to climate change research since 1977. His office says it's an effort to find out whether executives "lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how such risks might hurt the oil business." This follows on the heels of calls from 50 environmental groups, both major Democratic candidates for the presidency, and Democratic members of Congress for a federal probe into the firm. Although the push for a federal...

Former Vice President Al Gore made a prediction for the earth's point of no return 10 years ago and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh held him to it since that day in 2006. The countdown clock on Limbaugh's site has been running for nearly 10 years since Gore's apocalyptic prediction about the earth as a result of greenhouse emissions. Less than a month remains in the countdown. Gore predicted, when his film "An Inconvenient Truth" was first released at the Sundance Film Festival, that the earth would be in "a true planetary emergency" within the next ten years unless drastic...

RUSH: Try this one from yesterday's stack. I don't know if you people know this or not, but Al Gore has been out at the Sundance Film Festival out there in Park City, Utah. This is one of Robert Redford's big do's, and apparently Al Gore is working on a movie that -- what is the name of this movie? Oh, that's right, "An Inconvenient Truth," and the movie will document his efforts to raise alarm on the effects of global warming, and so he brought Tipper and the kids out there. He's attending parties and posing for pictures with...

That's it. Three weeks from tomorrow, it is all over for us, because CO2 emission have continued to grow. Watts deploys the scientific data showing that the Gorepocalypse is not developing in surface temperatures, killer storms, and the other indicia of doom.