Free Republic

Florida and Texas are the two states expected to suffer the greatest economic damage from climate change, according to a new study from Science magazine. The study used a model that aimed to calculate the future impact on each state’s gross domestic product (GDP) from events including hurricanes, storm surges, changes in agricultural yields, changing electricity demands, changes in mortality rates, changes to the labor supply, rising sea levels and rising crime rates. The study comes amid a concerted effort by climate activists to help the U.S. meet the goals of the Paris Accord of limiting temperature change to below...

Environmental activists rode buses up to Albany from New York City to tell Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to mandate the use of 100 percent green energy and move the state away from fossil fuels … wait, what? That’s right. Activists affiliated with the group Food & Water Watch will converge on New York’s capital to “demand 100% renewable energy & a ban on fracking infrastructure,” the group tweeted. Food & Water Watch backed New York’s ban on fracking in 2014, and now wants the state to get off all “fracked” gas — that’s pretty much all their gas. Food &...

Beneath the warm cuddly exterior of the bunny-hugging greenie beats the heart of a fascist. If you ever doubted it, check out this Vox interview with William T Vollmann. Vollmann is an award-winning author and war correspondent once described as the most “ambitious, audacious writer working in America today” and tipped as a plausible Nobel Prize for Literature candidate. He claims once to have been a climate change ‘denier’ but not any more. The climate change threat is so dire, he believes, that only the most drastic solutions will do: It’s not just what some consumer does at home. It’s...

This Earth Day (April 22) we need to ask whether environmentalism has gone completely bonkers. Back in the 1970s, I skied Colorado’s cross-country and downhill slopes pretty regularly. Some years were incredible: many feet of snow as glorious to behold as to ski on. Other years, like 1977, I’d come around a bend on my XC skis, see nothing but rock in front of me, and just ditch. Who knew the industry I worked for in the later 70s was causing these climate and weather mood swings – even then, long before carbon dioxide levels hit the cataclysmic 400 ppm...

Communists do not recognize the law of supply and demand and are not particularly adept at planning centralized economies based loosely on Marxist ideology I’m placing the thickly sliced uncured bacon in the pan and, when it begins to sizzle, the marvelous aroma fills the house. It is a memory from my childhood when Grandma Elena would render bacon fat into lard in her tiny kitchen. It was a preservative for chunks of pork she would seal with wax in glass jars that would feed us for an entire year. It was stored in the cellar, the dank, damp, and...

Anyone else watch nova this evening? It did seem to make a somewhat good case though at the same time seemed to duck confronting skeptic arguments directly or at least so it seemed to me. I am not following this at a level of detail that I feel competent to debate one way or another so I am curious for others' reactions.

While singer, dancer and all around performer Beyonce reportedly responsibly heated up Coachella with a knockout performance this past week end, renowned climatologist, environmentologist, actor and all around Concerned Citizen, Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't as thoughtful. Leaving one of his many luxurious, energy guzzling homes, he scooted to the event on his fume spewing private plane where the 40+ star enjoyed the company of various women, all well under 30. “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” -Glenn Reynolds It is a mark of the moral bankruptcy...

With more than 50,000 wind turbines in place across the U.S., wind power now accounts for 8 percent of the nation's energy-generating capacity — and experts predict that figure could rise to 20 percent by 2030. But all that clean, renewable energy comes with a high cost to the nation's wildlife. Researchers estimate that 140,000 to 328,000 birds are killed every year in collisions with the turbines' spinning rotor blades and support towers. The risk to birds is highest at night, when the blades and towers are cloaked in darkness. Now researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, have...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - The whacky weather we've had lately is what some consider a major sign from Earth. "Our Earth is basically letting us know that something is not right," said Denise Abdul-Rahman. With Earth Day just days away, the Greater Terre Haute NAACP discussed climate change and ways to combat it. Abdul-Rahman is the NAACP Indiana Environmental & Climate Justice Chair. "What is occurring is that as we put out greenhouse gases, or what are called CO2 or carbon pollution, into our atmosphere, it is warming the temperatures," she said, "and those temperatures are melting our glaciers and...

Washington – Global warming is screwing up nature’s intricately timed dinner hour, often making hungry critters and those on the menu show up at much different times, a new study shows. Timing is everything in nature. Bees have to be around and flowers have to bloom at the same time for pollination to work, and hawks need to migrate at the same time as their prey. In many cases, global warming is interfering with that timing, scientists said. A first-of-its-kind global mega analysis on the biological timing of 88 species that rely on another life form shows that on average...

After reading Mary Beth Pfeiffer's engrossing new book, Lyme, you will probably want to kill any tick you can find, donate to Lyme research, and find out if you are at risk for tick-borne diseases. Spoiler alert: Your risk is likely increasing. Ticks, some of whom carry the pathogenic bacteria that causes Lyme, can now survive in environments where they would have frozen to death 30 years ago. The good news is that there's a lot of new research coming out about stopping and treating tick-borne illnesses, and a good new book that connects the dots between climate change, ticks,...

The increase in the atmospheric trace gas of CO2 has so far failed to deliver the catastrophic consequences predicted by the alarmists like Al Gore.  The headlines about "the end of snow" are now an embarrassment after a winter of abundant frozen precipitation.  At least a  decade ago, the fraudsters relabeled their purported peril "climate change," allowing any unusual weather to be blamed on mankind's use of fossil fuels. Now another rebranding is being proposed.  Michael Walsh noticed, at PJ Media: The Left, in the form of the think thank RAND, has gone full Luddite: Since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,...

GLOBAL warming could lead to huge volcanic eruptions across the globe which could wipe out millions of people, researchers have warned. Scientists state that the world is steadily warming, which is leading to the polar ice caps melting. However, as the ice in the north and south poles continues to melt, this could lead to the eruptions of volcanoes. This is because ice sheets and glaciers can help to maintain the structure of volcanoes and mountains. Gioachino Roberti, a PhD student at the University of Clermont Auvergne, said: “Imagine the ice like some sort of protective layer – when the...

Oil companies? The government? The public? All of the above share the blame. There are numerous ongoing legal challenges in an effort to determine who’s responsible for climate change. Exxon is under investigation by state attorneys general, cities are suing oil companies over sea level rise costs, and Our Children’s Trust is suing the federal government for failing to protect their generation from climate change. At the heart of these legal challenges lies the question – who bears culpability for climate change and liability for its costs and consequences? The case against the fossil fuel industry largely relies on proving...

Jerry Taylor believes he can change the minds of conservative climate skeptics. After all, he helped plant the doubts for many in the first place. He’s president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian-leaning Washington, DC, think tank he founded in 2014. He and his colleagues there are trying to build support for the passage of an aggressive federal carbon tax, through discussions with Washington insiders, with a particular focus on Republican legislators and their staff. Lesson one: Pick the right targets Political scientists consistently find that mass opinion doesn’t drive the policy debate, so much as the other way around....

A lawyer nationally known for being a champion of gay rights died after setting himself on fire in Prospect Park in Brooklyn early Saturday morning and leaving a note exhorting people to lead less selfish lives as a way to protect the planet, the police said. The remains of the lawyer, David S. Buckel, 60, were found near Prospect Park West in a field near baseball diamonds and the main loop used by joggers and bikers. Mr. Buckel left a note in a shopping cart not far from his body and also emailed it to several news media outlets, including...

A prominent gay rights activist set himself on fire in a protest suicide in Brooklyn's Prospect Park in the early hours of Saturday morning. David Buckel, 60, was found in the park at 6.30am on Saturday before hundreds descended on it to enjoy the warm Spring weather. He left a note in a bag for police which read: 'My name is David Buckel and I just killed myself by fire as a protest suicide. 'I apologize to you for the mess.' Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5616241/Prominent-gay-rights-lawyer-60-sets-fire-protest-suicide-Prospect-Park.html#ixzz5ChC9t5Qt Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

A spring blizzard that brought heavy snow and whiteout conditions to much of western and central Nebraska has shifted to northeast Nebraska. And if you think the Omaha area has avoided the snow, just wait a little bit. It's still coming, but it shouldn't cause nearly as much trouble as it has elsewhere. The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for east-central and southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa until 10 p.m. Additional snow accumulations of up to 2 inches and minor ice accumulations of are expected, the weather service said. Drivers should expect to encounter slippery roads.

Windmills use an enormous amount of copper. For example, a single wind turbine can contain 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum and 700-plus pounds of rare earth minerals. ... In fact, wind and solar energy use more copper than conventional forms of energy, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants. Conventional power plants require about one ton of copper to produced one megawatt of electricity, whereas wind and solar can require between three to five tons per megawatt. ... Make no mistake, switching from reliable sources of electricity like coal, natural gas,...

Susan Crockford is a polar bear expert with a message that climate alarmists don’t want to hear: polar bear populations are thriving and are certainly in no danger from thinning summer sea ice supposedly caused by ‘man-made global warming.’ That’s why the alarmist establishment is currently trying destroy her. First came a hatchet job in Bioscience, described by climate scientist Judith Curry as “absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published.”